“Esther, let Me love you.”
Those words from our Triune God have been re-echoing again
and again in my mind since my birthday evening. And Paraclete {my favorite name
for the Holy Spirit} has been helping me realize that, in a way, I don’t even
know how to receive His unconditional love.
So it’s been something I have been praying/meditating about
some. This morning it came back to mind again as I was in my prayer closet, trying
not to fixate on a request I had read that morning via email. Paraclete took me
back, once again, to Jesus’ Valedictory Address {John 13-17} and 1 John.
John 15:9-10 came to mind:
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My life, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
I found myself wishing very much that Jesus hadn’t put that conditional statement in there!!! Because that’s what ends up becoming a trap to me, again & again & again—trying to feel like I have earned or deserve God’s love based on what I DO. It so easily becomes a point of pride and/or legalism. But there’s another critically important part of that verse! “Just as….”
Jesus’ example and His obedience of the Father are to be our
model! And He doesn’t obey out of fear or because He is trying to earn God’s
love. Jesus obeys because He is in perfect relationship with the Father and
because of all the concepts we read about in Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian
Service! {The first book we read here as part of the Servant Teams
curriculum – somewhat dense, but really good with lots of practical application
too!}
It’s like the heptapod language—all an interwoven circle.*
So Jesus obeys the Father because He loves Him and because
They are eternally in perfect relationship {with Paraclete too, of course!!}.
So love should be the driving force of our obedience, not fear & torment (1
John 4:18). But why do we love God? The very next verse tells us—because He
first loved us (4:19)! And also 4:10—He showed His love for us by sending Jesus
to be our propitiation (the conciliation, the act of making God favorably
inclined, appeasing Him).
Abba’s love came to me through the death and sacrifice of
Jesus. In my prayer closet this morning, Paraclete showed me that when I’m
trying to earn/prove myself worthy of God’s love—by serving, going overseas,
etc. etc.—I am acting like Jesus’ love & sacrifice were not sufficient…I am
minimalizing the greatest act in all of history and acting like my filthy rags
of righteous deeds (Isaiah 64:6) are better.
Oh Abba, forgive me for that egregious misconstrued view!!!
So we abide in God’s love by keeping His commandments out of
a heart of love for Him, because He first loved us and reconciled us to
Himself. See how it’s like a heptapod* circle??!!! Love is the goal, the means,
and the catalyst!
And it’s all about You, Abba—it’s not about me or anything I
could ever do.
Abba, I don’t know how to practice and apply this! But I
know it is foundational and critically
important—I know it’s a game changer if this lesson could sink deep into my
heart and become my driving force! Again in my prayer closet, Paraclete
reminded me that I can’t give what I haven’t received….
{And at that point I arrived at my destination!}
About a month ago, I joined a small accountability group at
a local church here. We are going through a book called The Genesis Process together. It’s focused on helping people deal
with the root causes behind addictions or other self-destructive coping
behaviors. It keeps on bringing me back to this idea:
And then this morning I started working on the fourth process, and this is how it began:
I definitely learned this lesson the hard way in August
2016. That month, two men who were serving as leaders in both the organization
and the church each had to resign because of moral shortcomings. The first one
was an especially hard blow to me, as I had been welcomed into his home many times
by him and his wife.
I remember crying in the staff meeting when his resignation
was announced. And then I went home and sat on the floor of my room and sobbed
for probably around 10 minutes. Grieving the brokenness of sin. Grieving the
pain I was sure his wife was going through. Grieving my own hurt too. Fighting
feelings of a guilt too complex to explain without sharing details of other
peoples’ stories.
That day I was so tempted to make a vow of sorts—a vow never
again to get so close to another family that I would open myself up to that
kind of pain. A vow never to trust and admire someone as I had allowed myself
to do with him—because such Christian familial love had wounded me deeply.
I thank God that I stopped myself from making that decision.
I knew it was the wrong decision—a decision that would let the enemy win. And
so I continued to grow in relationship with many other sisters and couples. But
that wound still aches when I think of it. I think I allowed that and other
things which began developing around the same time to plant a seed of
hopelessness in my heart. I did my best to process and forgive….but somehow I
think I closed off a little cupboard of bitterness inside my soul.
Fast forward back to today. Later in the morning, as I was
outside processing through some other stuff, my mind made its way back to what
I had read in The Genesis Process.
I wrote:
Love & wounding—both are always two-way streets. Except for with God. He is the only One who loves perfectly and never wounds unjustly—with the one, all-important exception of Jesus on
the cross.
In a strange, miraculous way that only God could plan, that
moment in human history was both the most unjust (towards Jesus, who had done nothing wrong), and yet also the most
merciful & gracious & loving towards us—we who had broken all the
relationships, who have done all the
wounding, who deserve nothing but eternal judgment and yet receive nothing but
unconditional love. Such beauty & brokenness at the same time!!!
Now a few hours later, those words bring to mind Hebrews
12:1-3:
“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”
And so I choose to continue opening myself up to love and, yes, even to the risk of human woundedness, because in so doing I am following in the footsteps of the most truly Human person who ever lived—our Savior, Jesus Christ. May His love in and through me glorify and magnify HIS beauty!
*To fully understand this analogy, you have to watch Arrival – it’s an alien film, but I
found it to have deep theological undertones looking at it from a Biblical worldview!
But to semi-explain the circle bit: Basically in that film, the aliens
communicate through a written language made up of circles, with each circle
being a phrase/sentence with multiple words...or something like that! See below
for an example. The circle is formed by smoke from the heptapod's feet, and so
the language is written with foreknowledge of the phrase/sentence as a whole.
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