Love (Part 3)

This week continues our series on love. If you have not already read part 1 and part 2 please take the opportunity to do so before reading today’s post.

As we learned from part 1 God is love, but what exactly does that look like? The most well-known place in scripture to go on the topic of love is 1 Corinthians 13.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient.

The definition of patient is - “bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship, pain,etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint, anger, or the like.” (dictionary.com) So, in real life, this means love is able to keep cool in moments when we want to hurl out a piece of our mind wrapped in all manner of disrespect. Patient love does not look like us honking our horn at the elderly person lethargically crossing the street as if they were purposely trying to make us later for work then we already were. There is nothing lovely about that scenario at all! Patient love does, however, mean, that we are to pray that this elderly person gets to where they are going safely and that the Lord touches their heart along the way in the very moment we want to honk our horn at them. When we feel our blood pressure rising in a particular situation our response needs to be measured against the barometer of love. Ask, is what I want to do patient love? If there is any hesitancy in our ability to answer “yes” then we need to rethink our response before it comes out as an impatient response. Can I just be honest here, I am not good at stopping and taking the split second needed to measure my response against the barometer of love. This is one area that I need God’s grace for sure!

I am so thankful that God’s love is patient with us. He is perfect, His love is perfect, and He does not make mistakes. I have always envisioned Him watching me go around the mountain for the 100th time and then feeling like He is banging His head against a wall all while saying, “when is she going to get this thing figured out?” The problem with envisioning God this way creates a huge discrepancy in the character trait of love being patient. If I envision God as being frustrated with every sin I find myself so easily entangled in, then I have just put an extremely limiting factor on God’s ability to love me patiently. Does my sin sadden His heart? Absolutely it does! As parents, it breaks our hearts to see our children fall into patterns of sin too. The difference here is that God will wait as long as it takes for us to continue to go around that mountain until we actually want to change. Patient love allows us to learn and grow. Impatient love will come in, take over and then we will find ourselves no better off than before. So, yes it saddens my Father’s heart to see me entangled in the same sin for the 100th time, but God also knows sometimes it may take me 101 times of fighting with the same old demon until I surrender and allow Him to change my heart. What we need to desperately understand, is that God NEVER leaves us or forsakes us (Hebrews 13:5). He is never going to give up on us! His love is patient. Patient enough to outlast our impatience and our stubbornness! Look at Jonah, God was willing to wait until Jonah was ready to surrender his heart to the Lord’s plans and purposes. We are no different. God’s love is patient with us. He desires to see us change. If that means 101 times around the same old mountain, then so be it.

Love is kind.

When a person is kind their very character will naturally look to the goodwill of others. They do not look at their own interest, but rather they attend to the interest of others. (Philippians 2:3-4) They desire to see others grow, learn and flourish. God’s very nature is kindness. He always has our best interest at heart. I thank God he looks at me with love that is full of kindness.

Lord, I thank you that your love is patient and kind. I pray that you help us to be full and overflowing with love that is patient with others especially in those moments when we are beginning to feel frustration trying to take over. In those moments may you remind us of the all the times you showered us with your loving patients so that it may move to be patient toward others. May our moments of frustration be turned into opportunities to show loving kindness.  Thank you for being so patient and kind to us. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray.

To visit other posts in this series please visit the Love series page.

Love (Part 2)

Last week began our first installment on this journey of understanding God’s love. If you have not had the opportunity to read last week’s post entitled Love (Part 1) please do so before reading today’s post.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!...”

1 John 3:1

The Father has lavished His love upon us! That word lavished means “to expend or give in great amounts or without limit” (dictionary.com) Our Heavenly Father gives His love without limit! There is no end to His love. We can never walk away, grow out of, or sin our way out of His love for us. Yes, I did just say “sin our way out of.” Our Heavenly Father does not base His love upon our actions! It breaks His heart when we sin, but that doesn’t change His love for us. When our children lie to us, do we stop loving them? Absolutely not! We teach them to tell the truth and we love them whether they sin or not. God is no different. We are His children. He loves us whether we sin or not. He loves us without limit and without condition. If there was a sin that could stop God’s love then He wouldn’t be God. Sin would be more powerful than the love of God if that were true. No sin or any amount of sin is ever going to keep God from lavishing His love upon us. Wow, what a revelation! I thank God that His love is not based on whether or not I am going to sin because the fact of the matter is that I am going to sin. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23 And I am in every way shape and form part of that all.

The beauty of God’s love is this…

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (emphasis mine)

While we were still in the midst of our sin, not even looking for a loving Heavenly Father, He died for me! He died for you! I can’t wrap my mind around this because some of us have come from a past that cursed God, rejected God and outright denounced Him and yet He loved us so much that He died for us. In the very depths of our rejection of Him, He loved us enough to die for us. Do you know anyone on earth who would die for someone who hates them? I honestly can’t name one person. Yet, this is exactly what Jesus did for us. It is mind-boggling the kind of love that God has for the human race! There is another aspect of Christ’s death that I want us to take a look at, and that would be the great lengths of pain and anguish Christ went through in the process of dying. As if dying was not enough, He suffered! His death did not resemble anything peaceable or even remotely humane. It was horrifying torment. The process of the crucifixion was the most agonizing method of death ever known to mankind. The love of Christ was willing to endure the worst possible scenario of death, in the heart of our sin just so we could experience a love from a Heavenly Father that is unlike any love that can be experienced here on earth.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (emphasis mine)

The Lord sent down His one and only son to a world that hated Him, so He could lovingly pour out His blood for our sins. How many of us would willingly give our only child to save people who hated him knowing that they were going to mutilate him beyond recognition and mar him to the point of death? Hum….if we are being truly honest, probably none of us would want that for our only child. But this is how much our Heavenly Father loves us! He willingly gave His one and only son so that we have the opportunity to experience this kind of love for eternity!  

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35, 37-39

There is nothing in this world that can separate us from the love of Christ. If there was something that could remotely manipulate the intensity of the love that God has for us, then God would not be God. Not even the satan himself has the power to decrease the magnitude of God’s love for us. Please note here that unconfessed sin in our lives does have the capacity numb us, and therefore affect our ability to sense His presence, but in no way does it indicate a change in God’s love for us. Far too often our human minds revert to the thinking that our sin will render God’s ability to love us deeply and unconditionally. This can not be farther from the truth. Nothing can separate us from the love that Christ has abundantly lavished upon us. NOTHING!!!!

Heavenly Father, I thank you for abundantly lavishing your love upon us. I thank you that your love is not dependent upon our obedience. Thank you for loving us so much that you willingly gave your one and only son so we can experience your love for eternity. Thank you that nothing on the face of this earth can separate us from your love. Lord, I pray that these truths about your love transform our hearts and minds. I pray that we begin to grasp how wide, long, high and deep your love is for us on a very personal level. May this understanding so deeply affect us that it begins to reshape our personality and our relationships with those around us. We ask this in the precious name of Christ Jesus.

To read more from this series please visit the Love series page.

Love (Part 1)

Today will begin a series here at learningirl4life about love. I personally have been dealing with some trials in my own walk that has left me feeling rather torn and tattered. I want us to take a journey together as we seek out what love is. Please know that I have not come to a full understanding myself, but I am hoping to have a better grasp of the love of my Heavenly Father by the end of this study. I pray that you will also walk away with a deeper imprint of God's love upon your heart as well as we journey together.

The very definition of the word love is actually God himself. It is impossible to understand love without first knowing the Lord.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” John 4:8 (emphasis mine)

God = Love, and Love = God. they are synonymous words. I can’t vouch for others, but speaking for me personally, I have long pictured the equation to look more like this... God = Judge, and while this is a true statement, I did not equate that judge to be a loving one. In my mind, since God was a judge, He could not possibly be loving. I had forced God into the box of ruling with an iron fist, one who was ready to strike down every injustice and sin that had so easily entangled me. So, if my God was simply sitting on his throne ready to point the finger at my every wrong, then naturally I would not comprehend a love that flows from that understanding of God. My God was too limited. By doing this, I had set God up to fail because in my mind it was not even possible for a judgmental finger pointing God to love me. I had way too many sins heaped up in a pile too big to be loved out of. In other words, I had taken the definition of love right out of God’s very nature.  

How about you? What does your God look like? Does your God equal love, or do you equate His name with something else? What picture comes to mind when you think about the Lord? Is it love? If not, why not?

Paul writes a prayer to the Ephesians and in that prayer, he prays that they may understand the vastness of the Father’s love.

“...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 (emphasis mine)

I can only figure that if Paul had to pray for the Ephesian church to have the power to grasp the depth of God’s love then, I probably have to do the same. So, join me as I pray…

Father, I thank you that you are the very definition of love. I pray that you open up our hearts to begin to grasp the vastness of your love for us. I pray that this becomes more than just a knowledge, but rather an all-encompassing experience. That your love begins to shape and mold our hearts so that we can be vessels that will pour out your love upon everyone we come in contact with. I pray that your love overtakes us so much that it becomes contagious to those around us. Thank you, Lord, that you desire a relationship with us and I thank you that those who seek you will find you. Help us to seek your heartbeat of love for us and those around us. In the precious name of Jesus Christ.

To read other posts from this series please visit the Love series page.

Grace

The definition of grace - getting something we don’t deserve.

The problem that we can run into with grace is not on the end of the one extending grace. The problem lies in the hands of the one receiving grace. We are incredibly thankful in the moment that someone extends the hand of grace towards us. But how long does that thankfulness last? How long will we be grateful enough to turn around and extend the exact same hand of grace that was just shown to us upon someone else? Far too often we quickly forget how thankful we were the moment that grace was extended to us. We should have a long-term memory in this department, but often our memory can end up being extremely short sided. We can be so quick to forget that when we are faced with the opportunity to extend grace we become reluctant, if not completely opposed to the idea entirely. When a spirit of thankfulness and grace is not treasured up in our hearts and remembered with a sense of humility and meekness, then we will find ourselves turning to a sense of entitlement.  The story of the unmerciful servant found in Matthew 18 is the perfect example of this. Let’s take a look at it…

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” Matthew 18:23-24

This servant who had been forgiven all of his debt was thankful in the moment he was extended grace, but instead of fostering a spirit of thankfulness and grace in his heart he was quick to forget. So when the time came for him to extend the hand of grace, chose to extend the hand of judgment instead. In the end, this servant reaped exactly what he had sown. He sowed judgment, therefore he reaped judgment. I would almost guarantee if he had sown grace, he would have continued to reap grace.

Call to action

When grace is handed to us, we should keep records of it. Have you ever considered keeping a grace journal? What would happen if we made a conscious effort to remember those moments of grace by writing them down? Writing things down helps us to remember. And in the moments we forget we have a place we can go to be reminded. We all need reminding of things from time to time and our grace moments are no different. I want to encourage you to keep a record of your grace moments. May the first entry in your grace journal be your salvation. We all know not one of us deserved that kind of love because in the moment we were still sinners Christ died for us!

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

Heavenly Father, let us not forget your loving hand of grace that was extended the moment you died on the cross for our sins. Help us to keep a record of the grace moments we encounter so that we do not quickly forget like the servant in Matthew. Help us to willingly extend the hand of grace in the moments we are faced with those situations. We know there are so many situations that people don’t deserve grace, but you have called us to extend the hand of grace. Let us be your example of grace to the world in order to bring them to your feet! Thank you for being our ultimate example of grace. We love you and praise you for your loving hand of grace over our lives. In the precious name of Jesus Christ, we pray.