Love

                                                                                                                                                                       I started writing this blog weeks ago and I have changed the title several times. I finally just settled on “Love”, plain and simple. I knew God was showing me something and nudging me to write about “Love”. I wasn’t exactly sure where God wanted me to go on this topic. I mean there are so many directions. However, there were a few things that have happened lately that I knew He was trying to show me something, but I just kept missing the bigger picture.

Yesterday I was home alone, and God reminded me of a time in my life when I didn’t know His love. I felt sad for a moment because I knew of His love, but I didn’t know it like I do now. I didn’t know how to love myself or receive love from others. It was a time in my life when I even questioned God’s love for me. I couldn’t comprehend His love for me, I didn’t understand it. How can God love me that much? Because of my not being able to love myself, and not being able to understand God’s love for me, I lost everything. I threw away everything. Years have gone by and during that time I was lost and hurting. I was trying to be brave and trying to love in my own strength. I was trying to figure out who I was. It wasn’t until a year ago that God opened my eyes in such an unbelievable way. I look back to this time last year and I was a mess. I was broken down. I was hurting in every which way you could possibly hurt. I’m talking emotional pain, mental pain, physical pain, I was hurting, I was so sick. I had nowhere else to turn, I was so desperate that all I could do was cry out to God. He began to strip everything away. It was like God needed to start fresh with me. He needed to just strip everything that I have ever known, everything that I have come to realize, everything that I believed, and everything that I have experienced. Everything! He needed to strip it all away and show me what His love is. Not loving on my own strength, not depending on other humans for love, but His love.

One afternoon, I was spending time with my grandbabies. We were sitting at my kitchen table playing games and coloring. My six-year-old granddaughter came and sat in the chair next to me. She said, “Nonna, God is calling people.” She said it so matter-a-factly that I was intrigued, I wanted to know more. So, I asked, “What is He calling people for?” She said, “To go and talk to other people and to be nice.” I asked, “Well who is He calling?” She looked me straight in the face and so seriously said, “You.” I was speechless.

 It was a remarkable conversation from a six-year-old, but the “be nice” really stood out to me. I know she said to be nice because she is only six and she probably hears the adults in her life say that. Well to be nice is to love. At my job, I see and talk to people from all walks of life and most I would try and avoid, but I see them through a different lens now. It took me a while to get this lens. I remember one day standing at my register and looking out into the crowd of people. It was God showing me that He knows each one of them and He loves them all. I stood there in amazement. God is teaching me to present His love to others that I meet just by being nice. It’s an amazing experience. Whenever I would tell Jenny, my mentor about someone that was difficult to work with or to be around she would tell me to love them because they are a child of God. That concept was so foreign to me that I didn’t know how to love them. I’m still not perfect but I am getting better. It wasn’t until I experienced God’s love for me, and I learned to love myself that I started to see others through that new lens.

There has been someone in my life whom I have been told to pray for on numerous occasions. God says to pray for your enemies. I didn’t know how to pray for my enemies. Love others and pray for your enemies were such foreign concepts to me that I seriously did not know how to do either of them. I think my prayers were something like “God, get them before I do”. It was a start. Well here recently it came up again. This person was stirring things up again and again my mentor said to pray for them. Praying for them was so foreign to me that it was weighing heavily on me. So, I’m at work and my boss who thankfully is a Christian was working in the back room. So, I walk back there, and I asked him. “How do you pray for your enemies?” He said, “You pray for them like you would your best friend.” I think at that point my lens got even clearer. Then he asked, “What does God say to do?” the words that came out of my mouth felt like someone was speaking over me. It didn’t even feel like I said it. I said, “To pray God’s love over them.” Did I just say that?

God is calling us to love as He loves. It is not easy because of our selfish nature.  For the last several weeks I have been in a situation where I needed to present God’s love to someone. To show them grace. I needed to be a vessel of God’s love for them. It was something I could not do on my own. I lost my bearings for a moment and got caught up in the emotions of it all. It was emotionally draining but only because I let it be. I needed to focus on their need for God’s love, but I did get a little selfish. Why God chose me, I have no idea and I may never know.  That is the way it goes we show love and grace to the most difficult people and in the most difficult of circumstances.

 Love is the missing piece. I recently saw a video of a man who was very old and was expecting to die soon. He was asked what message he wanted to leave for others. He said, “LOVE”. That’s it, that is all he said. Plain and simple. I believe it is what is missing in our lives. We don’t know how to love. It is what is missing in churches as well. It’s not loving in our own strength, but it is His love. It must be demonstrated in and through us. We can do everything to draw people in but what are we doing to keep them there. It is like a marriage. In the beginning, it is so romantic and sweet but once you get married the romance stops. Then someone walks out. It is the same way for churches we do everything we can to get people in the doors but what are we doing to keep them there. Where is the love once they are there sitting in the chairs?

 “People come to find love and are turned off by our tepidity.” Excerpt from a book by W. Phillip Keller

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1Corinthians 13:7

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1Corinthians 13:13