WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT

I was thinking that I could check off this box. I thought God was finished working on me in this area, so I tucked it away. I thought God and I were focused on all the other messed up areas of my wounded heart. Then, someone turned the light on!! Uhhhhhh!! I’M BLINDED! TURN OFF THE LIGHT!!

BLINDED! I was recently asked, “Do you love Joe?” (Joe is “the other driver” who had been drinking and crashed head-on into me and Meagan, killing my daughter instantly.) 

I didn’t want to think about it, but the question painfully resounded, “Do you love Joe?” What began as a general response suddenly became a spiderweb of emotions: “I can love Joe as part of the human race and God-created, but I haven’t thought about loving him as an individual, as ‘Joe.’ I have forgiven him, and I can pray for him, but I have never asked God to give me love for Joe. Honestly, it would have to be a God-thing! I was good with the miracle of forgiving him…Now I am in tears because this stings my heart. I need to love Joe!”

The reality is that I am commanded to forgive, which I have by the grace of God. And while I have forgiven, God also extracted hate. So, I have been content to believe that the absence of hate is love. And I did not give it further thought…until now. 

My young friend, who “turned the light on,” recently lost her younger brother to an unremorseful drunk driver and is struggling with many of the things I have or am struggling with. God has given her deep insights to her battle and her question has overwhelmed my soul. To my response, she replied, “It would have to be a God-thing for me to have any ounce of love for [the drunk driver] too. It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. I’m called to forgive him, but I don’t know if I am called to love him as a person…I guess loving him as a person means forgiveness. The weird thing is that we forgive our loved ones because we love them, but this time it’s the other way around:  forgiveness came first!” 

I know my Meagan, being in heaven and truly living in the LIGHT, would encourage me to love as Jesus loved. UHHHHH! And, I don’t know if I can even pray for that. I was content with the absence of hate, but I am pretty sure this is not what Matthew meant in the Bible when he said, “Love your enemies.” (Not that Joe is my enemy, but we are not friends, so this verse covers all and in-between.)

“You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:43-48

What I have come to realize even further is that I need to pray that God would give me the desire to ask to love Joe. Oh my gosh! I have to pray about praying!  And if I want to look more like Christ, I’ll have to stare at that lightbulb and pursue this until it is a reflection of my heart! Are there others I need to love? And how wide, how deep, how high is this range of love challenge? God’s love is limitless, inexhaustible. Is it even possible for me? Can I love those that hurt innocent children, torture animals, neglect the elderly, act out heinous crimes with no apparent remorse? I don’t know if my heart is even capable of this. YET, I refuse to stand before God in the end and say, “It was too painful, so I turned the light off.” 

WHY does it not surprise me in the least that God put this on my heart before I knew Sunday kicks off our pastor’s new sermon series titled, “LOVE. EVERYONE. ALWAYS.” I expect the LOVE lightbulb to get even brighter as I sit under this teaching. O God have mercy.

So…onto God’s workbench I go yet again. Somehow, I keep sliding off! And I’m thinking I am not alone in this. Could this be a “lightbulb” moment for you? The fact is that God loves us too much to leave us as we are AND on His workbench is the best place to be. By His grace, there is room for us all! 

GOD, help me want to love as YOU love! Hammer, chisel away until my heart is a reflection of YOU. 

Tag! You’re it!

“The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” 1 Timothy 1:4-6

 “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Comment. Share. But do pursue the light with me.