God has this reckless, scandalous, incomprehensible, deep, relational Love for all of us. I don’t get it. I am fidgeting just writing about it. I am so excited by it! We live in a world continually promising you changing things. They promise to love you today, but unsure of what will come tomorrow. Everything changes in a world where even the slightest slip up can ruin your life!
We live in a world where people are in DIRE need of Love. I mean, just last week, and I do not even mean this week, I have been told stories about suicide, self-mutilation (cutting, burning, suffocation, scratching, carving, and others), rape, drug abuse and addiction, teen pregnancy and depression. It is amazing, that this is going on in America. What is sick is that that is just a glimpse at the darkness trying to consume people!
We all live in a world where we often don’t even know what is going on inside the walls of the place we call home. We all have a glimpse of what is going on around the world. Slavery still exists, prostitution is on the rise with young children, women caught in the trap of the terrible men in congo have NO CLUE what true Love even means, children are still being drugged and put in a ruthless army, gangs are still rampant even on our soil, literacy is on the down slope, poverty is seeing new all-time lows, selling a kid to put food on the table is popular, and this is still the tip of the ice-berg.
Heck, all of us are living in some sort of darkness right now. Some of us have these deep dark broken secrets that are just eating us alive!
We all have messed up views on Love. Recently I have been reading quotes about how Love is some song we sing, and about running away and something on the radio, blah blah blah. Hollywood has destroyed our version of Love. We use it to cover everything we do! We love your hair, or love your car or we love this dinner or we love this outfit, BLAH.
We have messed up understandings of Love! I mean think about it. I heard this story from Pastor Greg Boyd- A woman was attending a church, she comes to church, she has all these cuts and bruises. She just passed it off as she fell or tripped. It keeps happening thought. She starts coming in with bigger cuts and bruises, and one time with some teeth missing. People start not to buy it. She finally opens up and tells a few people that she is living with this guy who is beating her, and when he gets drunk he just goes on a rampage. She starts to get help from the church, and is in a shelter. Welp, once she got out, she goes back to the guy, and when asked why she goes back to this guy she answers “Well, he loves me, he tells me he loves me and is always sorry!”… Her twisted view of Love was telling her that this is what Love was suppose to be like.
This is not uncommon! I know of kids who have grown up with a person sexually molesting them, telling them it is out of love! There are people I know who have friends who tell them they need to sleep with this person, because this person LOVES you. We have people who sit alone in a lunchroom or on the bus or in life, who, according to mainstream media, need to be loved differently because they don’t fit in. Heck they are told they are loved, but yet they are still ignored. Kids around the world are sold into slavery, being promised a life of LOVE and success! There are people who are married, having an affair because someone told them they loved them, when their husband or wife failed to even acknowledge them. There are families who sit in church feeling shame and guilt as all they are told is that God is hurt by all the filthy sinners in the world.
Do you see how we have a twisted view of Love? Do you see how abuse, and suicide and immorality and impurity, and slavery and shame and guilt and self mutilation and prostitution and whatever else plagues our mind twists our view of Love?
Amazing isn’t it? Our biggest problem is that when we begin to see Love in this light, under those contexts, we start to impose those views on God. God is not an abusive father who wishes you to feel guilt and shame, while defiling you as a human. God is not a God of judgmental bigotry. Yet our understanding of Love is based off our understanding of how we are Loved. So it makes since why a prostitute does not go to church, or why a person being abused attends bible studies.
We have theology out there that tries to teach us that a God of Love is the same God that has predestined to be in hell, because it gives God glory. Meaning that some have been created to go straight to hell for the Glory of God. Where is the glory in this? Why would I want to spend eternity with a God that is forcing me out of fear to worship Him, and if I don’t give 10% or attend 2 bible studies, God will remove His hand of protection and lead us into the pit of Hell….
What kind of glory is that? What kind of Love is that?
It is twisted and messed up and just impossible to comprehend!
You see God has this RECKLESS LOVE for us. A love that goes deeper than any of us could EVER fathom. In fact, we cannot even understand it! God has this undying, unsurpassable, unchanging, unstoppable, everlasting, eternal, nothing in Heaven or hell could EVER stop Him. Nothing on this earth, nothing done by angels or demons, no power of Evil, not even the darkness you hide in your heart can change the fact that God wants you! NOT ONE THING can change that.
GOD is LOVE, and God is RECKLESSLY chasing after you! Love is taking all we need, and more and providing for it. LOVE NEVER FAILS because it is EVERLASTING! God does not change, and His LOVE for you WILL NEVER change! God can endure anything if it means for one moment God can hold you. All of us have a reason for coming before God. Some of us have pasts we are not proud of, or choices we are making, or have broken relationships that shape our feeling towards God. In these moments when we feel guilt and shame, God is forgiving you saying IT IS FINISHED IT IS FINISHED COME HOME COME HOME! YOU ARE MINE, and NOTHING in this world, NO CONDEMNATION could EVER separate you from that. Not even the power of HELL could stop my LOVE for you. And the best part is, I DON’T GET IT! I have no clue why!
I beg you to not let this world shape your view of Love! God is not any of those things! In fact, God’s LOVE for you is trying to save you from that! Greg Boyd puts it best that Love is not something God just does, it is the essence of who God is! God is the noun Love because God is verbing Love!
God does not just stop loving you because of something you have done, or something you are doing or something you will do. God cannot stop being the essence of who God is. God’s Love for you will not go up or down based off of your actions, it will only grow DEEPER in you. The power of Evil tries to stop that, by creating these chains that tie you down to your understanding of Love, and making you feel worse based off how bad of a “sinner” you are. Freedom comes with the Love of Christ!
You could even be an enemy of God, but yet God is STILL RECKLESSLY in Love with you!
You see, every moment God is RECKLESSLY in love with you, wanting to fulfill all of your needs, to give you purpose, to provide Hope. The Love God has for you surpasses ALL knowledge! God is FOR YOU, PASSIONATELY! Even when we are hidden in darkness, Jesus Christ still died for us!
The Cross of Christ is the ultimate expression of Christ’s RECKLESS Love for us! It is for EVERYONE, EVERY SINGLE PERSON, no matter what! Freedom, transformation, justification, sanctification, joy, hope EVERYTHING came from the Cross of Christ and is poured out to all of us and It can ONLY come at the Cross of Christ, because that is God’s FULL expression of His infinite LOVE for every single creation. For you, for me, for the old lady, for the prostitute and even the guy beating his son. God’s Love is recklessly driven to YOU. It is reckless according to us, because God will stop at nothing to Love you.
I pray you begin to be consumed by it, because once you are consumed, you will desire to grow deeper, and even when you feel like God could not Love you more, realize that you are only scratching the surface of a Love that God has for you, because God wants to be Loving you for an eternity! Be consumed, shake your false views of Love.
Be consumed by a God who has a reckless Love for you!
Blessings!
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