Got love?

Remember the commercials, "got milk?"

Well, I'm lactose intolerant and I hate milk, so I could care less about milk, but what about "got love?"

Who doesn't want love? 

If we trace back every desire in our hearts, whether that's initially money, comfort, or peace and quiet, trace those back to the deepest layer of what we really want, I guarantee you will end up looking at the desire for love.  Try it.  Ask yourself why do I want _____, and when you answer that ask why? And then answer that and ask why? And when you save yourself the time and trouble and realize you just want love, it will no longer carry a hollowness about it.  It will be the last thing left under all the other layers.  

LOVE.

"filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

What does it matter? 

Just that in every way, 

whether out of false motives or true, 

Christ is proclaimed. 

And in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice (Philippians 1:11, 18)

Through Christ.  I can definitely do some "right-eous" things like feed the poor or call up a friend and listen to them and tell them I love them, but all of that means nothing unless it is Christ doing those things through me.  It's a passive activity for me, where my words, time, arms, and senses are all at His disposal.  Meaning when any of those things, for me, get uncomfortable or 

Frustrated (or annoyed) I can freely take that feeling to God and show Him.  But the more I do the less surprised I am at how truly annoyed I am at everyone.  

I often say to God, "I can't love this person when I feel so annoyed at their ego and the way their face looks like a sneaky fox I just want to punch them."

Or I say: "God, this person always makes me pay for things and it makes me not want to hang out with them any more cuz I feel like their freaking mother when I'm not."

Or one of my real honest ones: "God, this person is so ugly, I don't like them cuz they're ugly."

Me, on my own, loving people is as shallow as an empty cup.  If they don't meet my needs and desires to be valued then they are worthless to me.  Why would I love a robber or someone who wants to murder me?  Why would I love someone who stabs me in the back or gossips about me?  Why would I love ugly people when I don't want to be ugly or seen with ugly people? Why?  Only would I love such people if Christ we're loving them through me.  Because Christ is all about rescuing the lost and marginalized.  Why is He like that?  Because real love is freaking heart melting and flabbergasting-ly beautiful.  Real love places value on someone's mere existence.  It has nothing to do with money, beauty, or even personality.  It's about relationship--that's it.  

It's sad that these days people don't know how to have real love-relationships.  Everyone has a relationship built on other stuff like money, beauty and personality.  But relationships built on love are the only ones that last forever.  Because money will eventually run out, beauty runs out, and even our personalities go through hiccups and sour phases.  But a relationship made up of one ingredient: love, outlasts any tempest.  Why?  Because God is love, and nothing can stand up against God.  

This is why our righteousness must be through Love Himself.  It is Christ who loves through us, and we live through Him, and everyone benefits because God uses us as vessels and we get to be brought into love because of that.  We might feel it to be unfair or weird that we can't love God by our own, or that we can't love another person on our own, and that since it's not our love it's somehow not real.  But what is love to us?  Isn't it a thought or a feeling we get when we are around someone or attached to someone?  We feel all googly eyed or our heart beats super fast or we feel overly protective and we think "yea, that's love!"  

If you really think about it, get specific with it, you'll soon find that what you define as "love" is actually quite easily destructive.  Being googly eyed is fun but if you were always googly eyed around the person you love, then when they were hurt or in pain you would have no sympathy to offer them.  You would just be a googly-eyed idiot, useless and probably annoying to be around if the person you "loved" was in a lot of pain.  The same goes for a quickened heart beat, eventually you'd die of heart failure and being dead is useless for the other person and for you in the context of being in a love relationship with them.  Overprotective can be overbearing.  Parents who are overprotective hinder their kids from growing because of how little exposure they have to the real world.  They become crippled.

All in all, love is not what we think or feel it is, but love is a person: God.  

If you love someone it means you understand that God is made beautiful by how you interact and treat that person.  And when God is beautiful so are you by the relationship you have with Him.  The church is the bride of Christ.  We are married to Christ and who Christ is is who we are.  Because we are one with Christ.  

You don't love anyone on your own.  That's not love, that's something else (money, ego, pride, or vanity) but it's not love, because nothing outside of God is love.  He is love!  

So then what does that mean about us before we met God?  Who were we?  We were sinners.  None of us chose God.  We, on our own, would never choose God because without Him we have no love.  God first chose us.  He loved us first.  He made the first move on us, all of us.  None of us got here by some grand and sacrificial decision of our own.  We all got in by grace of being hunted down by The hound of heaven.  So then doesn't it make sense that none of us is expected to continue this relationship on our own?  Does love from God suddenly make it my love?  Isn't love always going to be God's alone?    Yet I always tend to freak out at how unloving I am or how bad I am at loving people.

Hahaha.  It's hitting me more clearly now that I am terrible at loving people BECAUSE apart from God's love I have no love to give!  

I keep pulling from a resource that's always going to run dry in a matter of time.  But the resource I should be pulling from is God.  I need His love poured into me every day...because literally I have nothing without it.  I have no love to give if God does not first give me love to give. So then all the actions I do and all the righteousness I practice must come from God giving me love.  It's a real problem if I don't get love from God.  I will be useless.  So refueling and re-attunement to God's love for me is critical.  

How many times a day does it take to get love from God?  As many as it takes to be enough that you have love to give others.  If your goal in life is to love God and others, as God wills, then getting love from God will be your main priority every day.  Getting, getting, getting, and giving, giving, giving, is a cycle until it becomes our nature.  

You'll soon see how resistant you are to getting God's love because people who can't love others ...that's the moment you also notice your resistance to going to God for love.  Maybe you're going to what you think is God, like success, peace, or comfort.  But the true test is love for others, because without God's love you just logically cannot give love at all.  How can you give of something you don't have?

I notice this and it sobers me a lot.  I'm like "agh!  Really God?!  Again? And again? And again? And again?"  I'm THAT resistant...because lots of people for me are hard to love, not because they're hard to love but because I have no love in me to give them.  It's not the other person who needs help.  It's me. 

God's love is not prejudice, weak, or sometimes broken.  God's love is fail proof!  It's us who don't go to Him to receive it from Him.  We resist to the point of torture because deep down inside we want to think that we don't need God.  We can freaking rule our own lives!  And nothing changes that inside of us until we see Christ accepting that about us and laying His life down despite it.  

Sitting with God in my sin, telling Him I was going to continue all my bad habits because I just couldn't stop, was something I did more out of anger than a desire for proof of His love.  I did and do hate all my bad habits because they inhibit me from loving others and loving God more deeply.  But when God gently wrapped His arms around me and said "okay" (saying "okay go ahead and continue in your bad habits, because I know you can't stop right now, and that's okay") I could breathe a little bit.  

My heart became less tense and I looked at Him for many nights like "are You sure?!  Are You really sure it's okay to continue in my bad habits?"  And He would say "yep, because you said it yourself that you can't stop even though you want to, and that's okay because you can't stop without me."  

"But God, You're here now....(I would start to get shaky)".  I would start to get apprehensive and my heart would beat fast again, and the guilt and shame would lurk all around me, waiting to pounce, but God would say "shh, I'm here but we are just going to hug and cuddle for now."  

And that's what happened.  For about 6 months I continued in all my sins and bad habits, but at night I would cuddle with God.  I still do that from time to time, especially when I sin.  

Then I started noticing in a small and subtle way how much deeper my love for others got.  It was so small at first, but it was real.  I noticed I was less anxious and a little less afraid.  I would do things that I normally wouldn't do...like call people or spend time with certain people or think about other people in my free time.  But, I don't know how to really explain what is happening systematically...because there is no system.  There's just relationship.  There's room for mess ups and mistakes because love has no idea what anger is because it has no idea what entitlement is.  Love is all about the other.  Love is all about God.  

It was and continues to be my cuddle times with God, especially after I mess up, that changes my heart.  To know that that was the whole reason Christ was sent by my Father, to die in order to take my death away.  The death of sinful bad habits.  

In movies, the hero who saves the villains life by sacrificing his own is always enough to change the villains heart.  

Christ died for us, the villains, and unless and until we understand that ---we won't see the change in our hearts.  

What's the difference between me changing myself and God changing me? 

The goal is the difference. 

So that if your goal is to get God (which by the way you have the moment you open your heart) then everything else that happens to you is just evidence of how much you actually only want God.

When things go badly that is the true test of our hearts goals and treasures. 

Can you think of something difficult or stressful in your life right now?  That is probably your real treasure and your real "god."  

"I just want to be married!"

"I just want kids!"

"I just want to be healthy!"

"I just want to be debt free!"

"I just want to be beautiful!"

"I just want to have a friend!"

"I just want a job!"

"I just want some help with the kids!"

"I just want a better husband/wife...err for him/her to be better!"

"I just want a new _____!"

"I just want my kids to stop cussing!"

"I just want my business to pick up!"

"I just want so-and-so to stop pestering me!"

"I just want to be loved!"

When I start depending too much on my wants and desires without regard to God's role or involvement in them, I grow very unpleasant.  Because it's too heavy for me, and most of the things I want I cannot provide for myself.  I need God's help to get what I want, but when I ask Him for help He gives me what I need.  

The only reason I continue to want to go to God, despite initial frustrations at my wants being turned down a lot of the time, is that He always gives me something better and something more fun and profound than what I thought was fun and profound.  

His gifts are like expensive quality toys, while my initial wants turn out to be cheap plastic things that break after one use.  I know this because I've grabbed at many of my wants to know at least this much: what I want is nice, but what God gives me is awesome.  The difference is the time it takes to attain these things. What I want is instant, but what God wants to give me takes time.  

Indeed, patience is a virtue, 

and impatience is a vulture. 

What I want is God, but I know there are corroded parts of my heart that want other fake things that are not God. 

I don't always know what those other fake things are until I'm shown them by the Holy Spirit.  

But I'm less afraid to expose them, because God will cuddle with me no matter what.  

He already knows the depths of my dark and corroded heart.  It's really me who wants to remain ignorant because it feels more safe, UNLESS I know God will still love me upon seeing everything.  Regardless of whether I now know or don't know what I'm at fault for.  Will my Father love me when I have chocolate all over my face and He asks me "did you eat the cookies I told you not to eat?" And I say "yes, yes I did and they tasted good!"  

To which He would reply: "okay, let's cuddle and talk about it."  

I am sad and made more sad by my disobedience because I see how much I hurt the one I love who loves me, but I'm ready to share with Him everything in my heart openly because I trust in His unfailing love.   This is a relationship built on love not on expectations or even explanations.  His faithful love gently wipes my sin away, and teaches me how to live in the light of love, not in the darkness of secrecy and fear.  

And such love transforms me, such love transforms anyone!  Love never fails.  It has not failed me once.  Never does God not want to cuddle with me when in faith I believe that Jesus died to take my sins away so that I can approach the throne of grace with boldness in my time of need.

My eager expectation and hope is that I will not be ashamed about anything, but that now as always, with all boldness, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:20)

I desire to honor God with my body, whether by life or my death, but the words are one thing.  First I need to go to God for His love, because I won't be able to honor God with my body in that way unless it is God working through me to do so!  

Jmegrey