An epiphany just came to me as I thought about these lyrics I heard from a Christian song on the radio yesterday. This concept of I can't love God like He loves me. It's both a breathtaker for those of us who are perfectionist / performers and a slap in the face to the same crowd. It's a reminder of God's enormous love for us and a puzzle. The epiphany came in as I thought about myself and these man I say I "love." I think about how they are not the ones for me because they can't love me the way I love them or need to be loved. Where God comes in is that He is like me-loving those who don't love Him back and He feels the anguish not because they would complete Him but that they need Him. He knows what I'm feeling. He knows. He lives it everyday like I read in Sex God by Rob Bell. His love is perfect because it is sincere, meaning without cracks. But our love is cracked because we're broken. I want to ask why did He make us broken when all of us perfectionist people want to love Him back in the same degree? One) He did not make us broken, He made us real. Two) True love keeps no record of wrongs; thus, nothing needs to be repaid from the perfectionist who thinks their debt that Christ paid can be matched by their performance. God's love is powerful and deserves attention. But does it demand it? Does God command us to love Him? No, not exactly. He demands us to follow His commandments. Why? Because it will go well for us. There again His love shows up for us because He wants what is best for us. But how can we follow something that we do not love? This is where life and learning styles come in, this is where we are taught "elemental truthes" as the Bible calls it and then we come at some point in our lives to a crossroad. That crossroad is choosing to love God more than thyself or vice versa. How sincere that moment is at accepting His death and resurrection for me, choosing to then pick up my cross (knowing His grace is a gift not a trade-off) is what seals me with the Holy Spirit and ensures my eternity with Him. So it is basically Ephesians 2. I once heard it said that we shouldn't say that when we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior that we were saved. Rather we were saved when He took our place on the cross. Nothing we did provoked or insured our saving other than Jesus Himself. But we have to go to Him, we have to accept Him. There is no personal salvation if we stay where we are. There is Salvation, but not for us as individuals. It is like passing Go on the Monopoly board, you have to pass Go to get the $200. You have to GO through Jesus for salvation. However, you can pass Go and say you want to keep that $200 in the bank. It would be very stupid, because you're only harming yourself and the gift is what no one would pass up. But that's the thing, Jesus's gift to us is a choice, offered to everyone, to benefit the person, if only the person accepts it. Then when that moment finally does come and we accept who He is, who we are, and live in that new creation from that gift and Truth, we are no longer seen as broken but whole. When you're whole you can be sincere, when you're sincere you can truly love. And yet our love will always fall short from the love that God provides towards us every single day. That shouldn't be a discouragement to keep loving Him, but rather a great encouragement for He is greater than anything we can ever think or imagine and we get to be one in that Truth.
