1 John 4:17 The Message Bible
[ To Love, to Be Loved ] God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
As I listened to a Jonathan David Hesler CD yesterday and heard something that hit me like a ton of bricks. He said “God can’t love you any more! He can’t love you any less!” As he said this I just started to think about what was just said and how our love is different from God’s. God is love, so everything that comes out of Him is represented through love. Growing up it was always a big thing to talk about God’s wrath and fearing him because He is God. Fearing God doesn’t stem from being afraid of Him, it comes out of a supernatural love that we could never comprehend in our own lives.
God could never love you anymore than He already does! Some people would probably question this, but what can you do to make God, who is love, love you more. Pray more, read your Bible more, maybe go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons? These are all common things that should be a common part of being His children. Those of us with children know that we just love our children, there isn’t one thing that they could do to change that love for them. The problem with not understanding God’s love stems from being insecure with who we are in Him. We don’t see ourselves as children, but more as friends that we can change our feelings about.
God can’t love you any less! There is nothing, no matter how bad it is, that will keep God from loving you. Think about King David, the man after God’s own heart. He messed up after having a relationship with God like no man has really ever grasped. We have all been at a place in our lives where we don’t know how God can forgive us. If you have never felt this way then I’m happy for you, because when I felt this way my heart broke and I asked God “how could you love me? I’ve done so many things to show you that I wanted you to leave me alone.” I even cried out one day after my mom had just died and my dad was on his way to prison, “God just leave me alone! I don’t want to have anything to do with you!” Even as I screamed this from the top of my lungs at age 16 trying to push Him away, He never stopped loving me. In fact as I came back in to encounters of His love He took me even further into Him and His love. Nothing we could do or say can change who God is. He is made of love, all of creation was made through love.
I understand now why Jesus asked Peter over and over, Peter do you love me? How could we love God with a love that we don’t comprehend? You see our love for most things in life change. That is one of the reasons that marriages today are the way they are. We have the highest rate of divorce now than we have ever had before. Divorcereform.org took a pole in 2004 that said 4.95 out of a 1000 people have had a divorce in the United States. And if that doesn’t break your heart then you need to know that the United States has the highest divorce rate out of any other country. It’s because we have a hard time understanding love from lust, needs, and wants.
Lust is defined as a passionate or overmastering desire or craving. Yes we have a passionate desire for more of God but love isn’t just about desire. Lust doesn’t cause us to take God’s love and pour it back out into others, because lust is about what I can get from something. Lust is a desire that benefits me and only me not affecting anyone else around me.
Need is defined as a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation. If you feel that you are required to love God back, then you have missed the point! God isn’t obligated to love you, it’s who He is! Love comes out of Him because it is the essence of what defines Him and has produced creation. If love was a requirement for all creation then sin wouldn’t be an issue and would have never been brought into the world. Adam and Eve were created to love and fully understood God’s love for them. They walked with God in the garden! But even with as deep of a relationship as they had, they had a choice to step out of love. They were given many commands that they did obey, but missed the one that showed true obedience and love back to God.
Wanting defined means to fall short by (a specified amount). In no structure of God’s love do we fall short to Him. Maybe in our own minds we can think or say I just missed it. But you can never miss God’s love, He never stops loving you any more or less. What we confuse this with is our own thought process on how love works. Although we might step out in our own understanding of love, the Bible tells us that we never can step out where he won’t love us. Look at the story of the prodigal son! Even though the son stepped out of his own love for his father, his father never stopped loving him and even welcomed him back with opened arms. Neither one of the sons understood the fathers love just as we don’t understand our Father’s love.
I don’t even want to bring up the definition of how we define love because I’m convinced that we don’t truly understand it. Only one man to ever walk the earth truly knew how to represent the fullness of God’s love and He gave His life for the world so that we might be able to understand God’s love as much as we do today. I recently wrote a song that’s titled Overwhelmed. This is truly a love song to my Daddy, Abba! The chorus just repeating very simply I love you, I love you, oh how I love you. Everytime I sit down and play it my heart breaks because I know that no matter how much I try to love Him I can never give back what He has given me. His love for me is so overwhelming it puts me in tears of joy to know that no matter how stupid I act sometimes God’s love for me is the same. I love Him so much that I would lay down my life for someone else to feel the same way or even more than I feel when He just wraps His loving arms around me. This causes my heart to see people for who they really are, and makes me heart broken for a generation that needs to feel His love.
I could keep going on about this but I really believe that God will show you more of His love through just reading what is already here. I hope that this was something that captured your heart as deep as it has mine. God is love and all He can do is continue to love you and love you and love you! It never ends, but you can decide how much of that love you choose to understand and how much you choose to return. If it will just be another religious way of how the men and women of God today portray love, or whether you choose to walk in such a deep understanding of His love that you can’t help but pour it back out into others around you and change the world!
