Love

Originally posted at Desperately Seeking Sanity on February 11, 2009

On Saturday, I was asked to share a devotion/testimony at the Upward games at church.  I did so last year as well, but last year, it was a little easier for me to come up with something to talk about… afterall, it was a year after I had found my church, through the Upward Ministry.

This year, I didn’t want to talk about how Jesus plays basketball (my topic last year).  I wanted to talk about something different, but what?

So, I started thinking.

Saturday was the 14th… Valentine’s Day… a Hallmark Holiday if there ever was one, commercialized, and probably my least favorite holiday of them all.  Sunday was my 2nd birthday in Christ.  I started thinking about the things that I’ve learned over the past two years and if there was anything that stuck out as one of the biggest things that I had learned.

Who knew the answer would be in the holiday that I hate the most?

As I sat and pondered, I kept thinking of all the things I’ve learned, discovered, or changed and there were so many.  My decision to remian pure, my cessation of using foul language, my new found love for teenagers and ministering to them.  There were so many things that God had done through me that it was almost overwhelming to think about all of them.  I’d like to say that I had it hammered out before I got there Saturday morning.  I had every intention of getting it done, preparing, going over it and being confident in the talk that I was going to give that could potentially reach someone the same way a halftime devotion reached me two years prior.

But I didn’t.

I walked into the Fellowship Hall Saturday morning completely unprepared and unknowing of what I would talk about.

Way to go, Heather.  Way to be on top of things.

Of course, anyone who knew how my week went last week would’ve been completing understanding if I said, “forget it, I can’t do it.  I’m not prepared.”  But I didn’t want to say that.  I didn’t want to shirk what I signed up for.  It was important to me to talk.  It was important to me to share my faith.  I just didn’t know what I wanted to talk about.

That is… until I walked into the Fellowship Hall and saw all of the beautiful decorations that my partner in crime had adorned the day prior.  The Fellowship Hall reeked of love.  We were setting up for our “Celebration of the Greatest Love” dinner, a youth fund raiser that we had planned and was finally here.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.  It was Valentine’s Day and I had the opportunity to talk to these people about Love, but not the love that they think about when they think about Valentine’s Day, but rather the greatest love there is… His love.  The love that I never knew before, that I had come to experience over the last two year and the love that completely blew my mind.

I sat down at one of the tables, my bible open to the concordance going through all of the verses that contained the word love, most of them recognizable to me and just started jotting down notes and verses on index cards.  I had them all arranged in 30 minutes and then it was time for me to talk.  I didn’t know if it was going to come out right, or make the point that was so vivid in my head, but when all was said and done, I had people come up to me and hug me, thank me, ask for the verses that I used.  I had spoken to people.

Shoot one lady was there for the first and third games and approached me after the last game and told me that it was better the second time around that she heard it.  I had a mad who told me that he had been married for 40 years to a blessing and didn’t know what he was going to do when she passed.  He got teary talking about it, but told me that he knew that when that happened, she would be in a better place, waiting on Him, and it was through His love that he knew this.

It was a great experience.

I guess the ironic part about this is that while the boy knew that I was speaking on Saturday, I never told him what I spoke about.  He asked me how it went and I told him, but I never went into any detail.  Today, after church, he gave me a picture that had a verse on it that is one of my favorites…

I stared at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Just funny.  That’s all.” I said.

“What’s funny?”  he hates when I do this… leak just enough information from my brain to make keep him guessing…

“Well, it’s just that I’ve had a pretty crappy last couple of weeks with everything going on in my world and have been feeling a little blah about all of it.  And it’s not that I’ve been questioning God, you know that, but kinda… well, I don’t know.  Just feeling a little out there, floating around, not being able to make heads or tails of alot of things and pondering this whole love thing and trying to wrap my arms around His love for me, despite everything going on,” I replied.

Ok, so I didn’t really say that.  It’s what I would’ve said had I been given an opportunity to say that but with teenagers and children milling about vying for his attention and mine it doesn’t leave much room for talking.  What I did say was, “this is verse that I talked about on Saturday.”

“Heh.”

God just works like that, ya know?  It’s pretty amazing.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering exactly what I said about love, here we go…

I’m celebrating my 2nd Birthday tomorrow.  Not the day that I entered the world but the day that I entered the Kingdom.  Two years ago, tomorrow, I gave my life to Christ.  And in thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, with it being Valentine’s Day, a holiday I abhor normally, and on the eve of a pretty special day for me, I started thinking about some of the things that I’ve learned over the past two years and what the Lord’s done in my life.

In the past two years, both of my children have given their lives to Christ.  I’ve had friends that I’ve helped just by living out my faith and I’ve become a different person.  Some of the changes, I willingly made and others?  Well, they just kinda changed.  But that doesn’t surprise me because the Bible states in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”

And new has definately come.  I’m not the same person that I was and you can ask anyone in my life from my boss, to my parents, to my friends to my children and they’ll tell you about the transformation that they’ve seen.

However, I attribute most of these changes to the Love that the Lord pours out on me and today, for me, has become the celebration of the Greatest Love.  Despite how much I try, it’s hard for me to grasp the concept that someone loves me enough to give up his own son, to allow his only son to die for me, to forgive me of the sins that I’ve committed and am going to commit at some point in time.  It’s unfathomable.  But love is talked about alot in the Bible.  In reading the Bible, I’ve been able to discover alot about love; what it is, what it can do, what it isn’t, and more and everytime I stop and think about it.. and I mean really stop and think about it.. it’s almost beyond comprehension.

I work with the teens here at church and the word love is thrown around alot…almost as much as the word hate.  Love normally goes with the cute boy with the locker next to one of them and hate is normally associated with the girl that he likes and their parents.  I can’t blame them.  When I was their age, I thought I knew what true love was.  When I got married, I thought I knew what true love was.  When I got divorced I thought I knew what true love was.  When I had my first child I thought I knew what true love was.  All those times, and many other times in the last 32 years, I’ve thought that I knew what it was, what it meant, and how to live it out as well, but I didn’t.

But I’m slowly getting it.  Slowly, but surely.

The Greatest Love has a feeling.  “His unfailing love toward those who fear Him, is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.” (Psalm 103:11, NIV)  Isn’t that the truth?  I can’t tell you how many times that I experience a “high” because I know that I am loved for who I am, faults and all.  And when I’m feeling down, or alone, or unloved, I can “know and rely on the love God has for [me].  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” (1 John 4:16).

I know can know that love and rely on that love.

How amazing is that?  I can know it and rely on it.  Rely on it.  How many things can you rely on in your life?

Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s a command.  We’re commanded to do a lot of things if we chose to live by the Word, but we are commanded to love in 1 Corinthians 16:14 when we’re told to “do everything in love,” and again in John 15:17 where it states, “This is my command:  Love each other.”

Woah.  Hold up.  So we have to love each other AND do everything in love.  How hard is that for you?  For me?  It’s hard.  It’s a choice that I have to consciously make.  But that love, the love that He has for us has great benefits.  Did you know that love erases things?  “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs,” says Proverbs 10:12 and it’s reiterated in 1 Peter 4:8 when it says, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

If you have children, you know this first hand.  Just one look with their eyes and it doesn’t matter what they’ve done, the love that you have for them, and maybe the tax deduction, is what keeps you from sending them packing.

Or at least, that’s how it is if you’re anything like me.

But yes, we are commanded to do everything, not some things, but everything in love and we’re commanded to love one another. But that’s so hard.  There are people in this world that I don’t want to love, and we discuss this alot with the teens.  Often times, I’ll hear them say that they hate their parents, and I have to stop them.  I have to remind them that they may not like their parents but they have to love them, and respect them and then I throw this verse on them and it will stop them in their tracks and make them think….

“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God”, yet hates his brother, his is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he had given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:19, NIV)

Hold up.  Wait a minute. Yup.  That’s the response that I get from the teens.  And it’s not just teenagers that have a hard time with this… it’s adults, too.  It’s me.  I have a hard time loving people who are difficult people to love until I stop and think about the love that HE has for me.  If HE can love ME despite what I’ve done, or what I’m going to do, why can’t I LOVE others? Doesn’t mean I have to LIKE them, but I do have to LOVE them.  When I stop and think about it in that manner, it’s a little bit easier of a pill to swallow.

But it’s still hard.

And so we stop and think about all this stuff about love and we hear that we have to love others because He loves us, and how we have to do everything in love and how love can erase a bunch of wrongs… but what is love?

Can we define it?

Of course we can.  We can because He defined Love for us by His actions and it’s reiterated in the Word in 1 Corinthians 13.  But my favorite part?  Verses 4-8a.

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delights in evil but rejoices in the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.  Love never fails.”

LOVE NEVER FAILS.

His love for me is unfailing. How freakin’ amazing is that?  Unfailing.

So, if you don’t know that love, if you’ve never experienced that love, I am more than willing to chat with you about it and share some more of my experiences.  It doesn’t fail.

Ever.

Praise God for that.