When coming to an understanding about God’s love, I think I miss the point if I think of it as just that. His love is not just expressing it in words. Sincerely he calls us to His word to express His love, but invites us into a divine intimacy to feel His love. I call Him my Personal Savior. I have accepted him into my life, and that is awesome to proclaim. But when I feel so alone, and in desperate need of a divine love, how do I apply the personal aspect? What can I do to feel God's love in place of any other? I want to feel God's love as if it were breathing down my neck. How do I obtain that?
I think of it as a blessed interaction. He offers a close relationship in which our willingness is implored to begin. It is a close encounter that requires no less distance than to be face to face. It is a constant chasing that never tires out. Too often we become overwhelmed that the chase consists only of us chasing God, which can become exhausting just thinking about it. Because we think of it too much like chasing someone down who is already miles away that we could only hope to catch up. If the chase were to be only from me, I would begin to think of my relationship with God as something I could never live up to. But the amusing thing about it is that God loves the chase too! He loves to chase us! Just as much as we want to be chased after, he wants us to chase after him. Yet His longing for that must be more profound being that I have all of his affection if I am simply willing to accept it. And my heart slumps in sorrow in knowing that for Him to get the affection he deserves, he is compelled to beckon to us more times than he ought. He tenderly calls as I am distant and all too often unfamiliar with His sweet voice. This is why we were created. Have you forgotten? Or did you even know? This is not a minor detail worked into the fiber and handy work of our being, but an explicit major in our souls.
While we can become perplexed even trying to remotely come close to God, our hearts can grow weary in thinking that all of this time and space creates a great divide between His love and mine; That his love is so far beyond what we could even try to imagine. When studying the universe and the space that consists in it, it can become far too easy to lose focus on how close God really is, or how close he really could be. Thinking of all of the numbers that account into the miles that “separate” me from heaven, God seems to become intangible and unreachable. I become convinced that I am limited in my abilities to connect with him because I have to stretch across infinity to obtain a connection. Or I tend to think of him as so high and majestic that he would not even consider a possibility to even reach down to me.
God knew he had to do something to bridge the gap. He knew that our relationship with him would be impossible for us to understand without someone to explain this hope we can have in a personal relationship with him. He knew that he had to send someone to represent his very character. For us to experience his love to the fullest, God knew he needed to be a physical presence that would never be forgotten. It would be a presence felt throughout every century. He knew it would have to be something that would be talked about until the end of time. So He created Jesus, His son. He was to be a prime example or an exact replica if you will, of who God really is. He became the tangible love I needed to experience God. He was God in the flesh! Through his life we saw God’s love. I felt God’s love. Through his death I obtained His love. I and because of the price he paid for me, I now know His love. He came so that the distance I felt between Him and I would no longer exist.
Our relationship became personal. He expressed his desire for a close relationship. He made it so that His voice would always be recognized by me as long as I desired the bond. Yet he is not merely satisfied with just my desire. But my growing, abounding and overflowing longing for Him. He wants a constant progression from me in my infatuation for him and has created me with unsettlement in a stand still. It is His desired fellowship that I am persuaded to engage in. He is reaching out to touch me. That is His offer of mutuality to enable me to know that I too can reach out and touch Him. The sensitivity to his brush is where the personal relationship begins. Because it then opens my heart to allowing him to embrace me. Going from the nudge to cuddling is where the promise of His presence comes into play. It comes about this way so that I will never forget what it is like to grow into an intimacy with Him.
Forgetfulness of His passion for me can become a dark and lonely place. While He is sitting on a bench waiting to enjoy a conversation with me, I tend to become uneasy in just sitting with him and basking in His presence as I am enticed with other loves that I allow to take His place. It leaves me to find that nothing or no one else is as assuring as He. It is inevitable, to lose sight of God’s love and to replace it with another, it is then that I experience failure. It is then that I notice that nothing is withstanding and can measure up to what God has. Why does it seem to take a usual amount of time to realize this? I say usual because it is expected of us. It is our human nature to turn to God last or almost last every time. Most often, when other things are given the place of God, I am disappointed by the outcome as if I thought that it would or could really work that way. I am then left to hurt and blame others for the failed promises when I should have considered the choice, knowing what the outcome would be. I hear him calling through my pain, of failed relationships or fast spent resources, to rely on him for strength, and the love I need. But there is always something to grab my attention that wills to convince me that God is not enough. That if I just continue to pursue anything other than God, or if I just keep trying, my shortcoming will eventually be fixed. I sway myself in believing that there must be more. Only to find these things don’t satisfy the deepest longings of our heart. God becomes the second guess. He is our second choice. We become disappointed in ourselves because we knew that the leading of our heart to God was what we should have followed all along.
I am created to find love with the understanding that I am to never love another at the same level or beyond God. He has made Himself known to be a jealous God, and designed me for a specific zealous for Him. His jealousy is not proved through control or by being the master of His puppetry. But by an intolerance of my allowance of another to supersede everything he alone is supposed to be. This is an idolatry I can partake in without realizing it if I am not careful. God is a jealous God and should not be confused with being envious. To be jealous is to want something that belongs to someone else. Just as God chose Jacob for Himself and made Israel His possession (135:4), He made me with the full intent that I would be His and that I am His possession. In understanding this Jealousy of God, I am to know, and be in complete agreement, that I belong to God and should not allow any other to overtake me. God wants what is His; an undivided, unshared, non-partial and narrowed devotion to God. There is no self-regard or iniquity in his jealousy.
In our worldly educated minds, we would think of jealousy as a sociopathic personality with a suspicious distrustful mindset. We seem to have a one-sided definition when it comes to jealousy, when in all reality and spirituality there are two. The term we have come to know and experience sets off certain tones of uncomfortability in all of its hostility, aggression and demands. I’m astonished and amazed to think that this God who created the universe in all of its complexity delights in my attention. At just a word he could make the stars bow down to him, the rocks cry out to him and have the trees sing his praises, yet I am considered his most prized and precious creation.
He is jealous for me. He is the creator and I am His handy work. My life did not come about without visions and dreams of how it was meant to be. I was to be created by Him, to know him, to love him, to serve him, to worship him…to be his child! He loves us so much! And his expression of love already comes with the foreknowledge of our mistakes and short comings. Jesus already knew that Paul would deny Him 3 times, yet he loved him anyway. He also knew of the Samaritan woman’s adulteress ways, and he didn’t confront her at the well to be condemning, but because he loved her despite of her sin. Jesus knew that Judas would one day betray him, yet Jesus remained faithful to him because He loved him. And Paul could have continued to murder those who loved God and Jesus would have still loved him. Yet it is because of His love that he does not leave us where we are at. Because of his love we are not condemned. We are reconciled and transformed in the light of his love.
I have lived life aimlessly. I know of that fear of being lost and seemingly having no way out. I have turned my back on God with the determination that I could make it on my own. You see, Satan made the world look so enticing to me. He had me convinced that I was missing out. And now there are days in my life now that I wish I would have just “missed” out. Sin makes sure you deposit and gamble your life all at one time in hopes that you will one day miss out forever (the wages of sin is death). And if it does not kill you, Satan makes sure to remind you that you still have a price to pay. At the present time, in mid transgression, he makes sure you are aware that your sins are on him. I felt I was free from the burden of sin, not because Jesus already paid for them, but because Satan made me think he was going to pick up the tab. So then I start going through this life transformation and giving my life to God and begin to experience this life changing freedom. Then Satan steps in to bring up images of my past and bring me to my knees in guilt. Just as God has a book of life so does Satan have a record of all of my misdeeds, unfaithfulness, wickedness, stupidity and so on.
At one time I asked God, “if my sins are as far away as you say they are and deeper than I could imagine, how is it Satan seems to still be able to get ahold of them?” But because of God’s love for me, my slate is wiped clean. My sins are forgotten. I have been found non-guilty. His mercy for me is new every morning….all because of His passion for a relationship with me.
Ephesians 2:4-5 "But God,
being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with
which He loved us, even when
we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive
being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with
which He loved us, even when
we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive
together with Christ
by grace
by grace
you have been saved.”
