"we love because He first loved us."
1 John 4:19
Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving - it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.
O to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Oh what a scandalous love God has shown us. "God is not proud. He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him." - C.S. Lewis
That the sinner, deep in his heart, should never love God of his own volition is a fact. We can never love God or love purity and goodness simply by willing ourselves to do so. We love to fool ourselves, thinking we can love well, thinking we can be good enough for Him on our own...but we will always fail.
Even when I began to follow Him, it was because I wanted Him to stop my pain, not because I wanted to be holy. I wanted to be liberated from depression and anger and loneliness, not from slavery to self.
And this is where His love comes in.
This is where He whispers, this is where He woos.
This is where He comes to us in our deepest fears, in our deepest heartache, when we are confronted with all the crooked places in our hearts, and asks, "Will you let me love you? Will you let me restore you? Will you let me call you my daughter?"
And though we say no, He will still ask a thousand times.
He is a constant lover, who never gives up.
Because He knows that death to self, true repentance and new life, is the only way we can get all the other things our hearts seek. It is the only way we can be truly free, truly alive. It is DIFFICULT, yes. But it is WORTH IT. So difficult, and so worth it, in fact, that He is the only one who can do it.
Gently, gently, we are led to repentance. We can never change by ourselves; if that were the demand, if we who love darkness were to FIRST genuinely love the light to receive it, who then could be saved?
No one.
And that's what makes His love so scandalous.
Ridiculous, even.
He was ridiculed on the cross, and He continues to be ridiculed today.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't love us AFTER we change...He loves us BEFORE.
He loves us while we still hate Him, while we're slandering Him, mocking Him, joking about Him in a bar and then crying to Him from our beds that same night.
He loves us in the middle of our hypocrisy, when we're confronted with the emptiness of our lives while knowing full well how we should be spending them.
He loves even the loveless places in our heart that would make everyone else hate us and turn away, were they to view them.
Even if you never surrender to His love your entire life and curse Him on your death bed, He will still love you.
Even if you turn away and follow your own will, your own way, and walk the wide path of destruction, He will still love you.
Even if you scream at him, angry about your life, about a friend's betrayal, about a tragedy in the family, about the atrocities committed to the helpless around the world,
He will still love you (and He will still love them).
And this love, it is not just a feeling
(though He does dance and sing over you, and angels rejoice because of you; like I said, He is not proud. He is not afraid to show His love).
True Love is not a feeling anyway.
He does not stand on high smiling warmly and thinking good thoughts about you, wishing you well. Prosperity! Happiness! Go in peace!
No.
He will not only lift a finger, He will lift mountains and turn the world upside down to rescue you.
He has hands and feet.
He has a Body.
And His power is beyond all imagining.
It can create planets, it can form humans, it can raise the dead, it can mend the heart, it can cause kings to fall, it can cast out demons, it can heal diseases, it can (will) restore this planet,
And it can change you.
Forever.
Oh, a forever love...isn't that what we all desire? If I could be loved forever, by the Only One who has power to even make my life worth living...what more could I need? What more could I ever want?
When your hair begins to turn gray, and you cry as you look at your deepening wrinkles in the mirror and feel how un-beautiful you are next to younger women,
He will still love you. Cherish you even. Call you beloved, the apple of his eye.
When you have been in a foreign country and haven't worn make-up in ages and feel too fat and too tall and too weird, or like you always have to hide from the stares and whistles that follow you everywhere,
He will still adore you.
When you return home and cry because you want to go back to that other country, because you left a piece of your heart there,
He will still love you.
When no one else understands your feelings or experiences,
He will still understand you.
When you are addicted to something and have tried everything in your own power to fight it, when you have deluded yourself about the magnitude of your own power and self-control,
He will still love you...and yes, even heal you.
When you run, He will pursue.
When you cry, He will hold.
When you scream, He will whisper.
When you are hurt, He will rise in power.
When you are lost, He will find.
Still. Still. Though you break your promise a thousand times, though you wander, though to all others you are a lost cause,
Still.
I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power
through His spirit
in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you,
being rooted and established in love,
will have power, together with all God's holy people,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness
of God.
