I have love on the mind this morning. I awake in New Orleans with my wife celebrating our 40th anniversary by spending a couple of days in our favorite hotel. It is instructive to compare our love now, after 40 years, to our love back then. New love is clearly blind. Our euphoria over being in love overcomes our good sense. We can see only the positives and imagine that the feelings will last “forever.” Somehow I think that is all part of God’s wonderful plan. If we didn’t have those feelings and enthusiasm, if we weren’t blinded by “love” and naive in thinking things will stay the same forever, we would probably never commit to a lifetime with another.
But as those “feelings” mature over the years, they become more permanent and, indeed, more wonderful. Our love grows deeper and becomes based less on physical things and more on the entire person, the wonder of the whole gift our partner is to us. Added to that are the wonderful generations of children, grand children and greats. It is as if the newness of our love for each other is refreshed by each new wonderful little person brought into our lives. In addition, he gives us the years of sacrifice and giving that our partner pours into us, more than we could have ever imagined in the beginning. Yes, our God is pretty smart, the way He lures us into life time commitments and then rewards us in ways we never anticipated. You Go God.
Today, OC is focused more on the God Love that Pastor spoke of on Sunday. The unconditional love we have even for those we don’t even know. God love sometimes called Agape love is unconditional. In some ways it is completely miraculous: a gift from God. We can never understand it. But it has a practical aspect as well. It is an imperfect reproduction of the love God has for us. The practical part is worked out as we consider how God loved us. We love others who are “unloveable” because God loved an “unloveable” us.
“The Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying, “. . . love one another as I have loved you” ( John 15:12 ). He is saying, “I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you.” This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon tired and frustrated.
“The Lord . . . is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish . . .” ( 2 Peter 3:9 ). I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me. The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way. I may get irritated because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.
Today I am thankful for all the kinds of love God has given us: romantic love that matures into something more than we ever bargained for, familial love for those precious ones he gives us that start out loveable but don’t always stay that way, and the God love that reminds us how we are not always easy to love, but He loves us any way. We are to do the same, he enables us but we must do our part as well.
Man are we blessed.
Nick
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