The Truth About Love… It’s Supernatural Cross Training!
1 John 3:18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
Sometimes it sucks hurts!
Sometimes… We’d rather not, thank you very much!
Sometimes… NO, pretty much always, it requires our full and unconditional commitment just to love for one more minute.
We prefer Hollywood’s version. The drama, YES, it keeps things interesting. The mystery, Yes, it draws us like a magnet. The adventure, Yes, it is the story of pure pleasure. The beauty, YES, it is somewhere over the rainbow. The ending, DEFINITELY YES, the circle of the happily ever after yellow brick road.
Our world tells us, it isn’t love if it isn’t pretty. Our world tells us it isn’t love if we don’t profit from it. Our world tells us it is ALL ABOUT ME!
In our world you might as well be speaking in tongues, because the language of love is rarely translated correctly and is mostly used out of context, which changes if not destroys its meaning. We believe love is those “likey likey” feelings that cause our hormones to trigger our desire to wrap the person, place or thing in our arms and place them/it in our prison of lust (YOU ARE MINE!).
We believe our WANTING TO is the same as DOING SO when we count the ways in which we love.
We believe EVERY big or small attempt to love you should be honored and a medal be bestowed. “I TOLD you I loved you that day in front of the priest! The fact I haven’t told you since just proves it hasn’t changed.”
When all is said and done, I do not believe there is any man, woman, or child on this planet, who can (much less will) “naturally” know and show love. The original sin… the Adam sin… the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life sin, is what comes natural.
Love, TRUE LOVE, is supernatural!
Love is God given! For God so loved the world, that He gave
Love is created by God! “Let us make man in Our image”
Once upon a time, we were created in the image of God. We were whole… perfect in every way. We only knew love. We were unaware of anything but perfect goodness and love. Until we ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, our eyes were opened and we KNEW the opposite of God, we KNEW evil. We ate it up and became aware of our new nature. Naked and afraid!
Because God sent us out of the garden (lest we forget, He did clothe us first and He had trained us in gardening) we believe He doesn’t love us anymore and therefore He is no longer perfect in love. We think God is more like us than we are like Him. We judge Him based upon OUR NATURE not His. We refuse to confess and repent of our foolishness, continuing our eating habits (lust and pride of “life”), which will be an eternal disaster if we remain Evil’s spawn until the eternal wages of sin come due.
It wasn’t from lack of love, that God had to distance Himself from His precious creature, it was His supernatural love that bore the entire pain, grief, and wages of the sin so that we might turn back to Him and again have intimacy with Him. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Left up to us, WE WOULD turn our back on those who cause us pain, WE WOULD kill our love in retaliation for that which causes us unhappiness, WE WOULD build impossible conditions to earn small bits of our love back…
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him but we WOULD. Not only judge God for not doing enough for us, we WOULD also create an image of a god we can understand and most importantly control and/or ignore.
We create and replace God’s law of love with the lies of lust.
Love is… patient, kind, is not jealous; does not brag, is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
Without God, our version is Lust… me – Me – ME… need I say more?! Love Lust must be profitable (mostly to me), dressed to impress, greedily wants all they have to give, demanding the best, always aware of the balance sheet, chooses its battles, issues a silent, never ending “you owe me” note, does not rejoice in loosing but rejoices in winning every battle… need I go on?!
We do not know nor would we recognize love without Jesus. 1 John 3:16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.With Jesus, there is a Divine Call upon our lives… 1 John 3:23 believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.
The Divine Call of Love.
NOT our way of love lust… His way of love!
Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
The Way of Love is the cross!
Take up your cross… You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.
And follow Jesus… The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-40)
Love is not easy, or lightweight, or unnecessary, or conditional, or comes naturally (On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.)
As the Holy Spirit was preparing me for this post today, He began by reminding me to take up my cross.
I of course, initially sought to examine my life for those things and places, and habits that I needed to confess, repent, and be changed because of. My cross was looking pretty heavy!
But it was still all about me… What if the cross I am to pick up, isn’t about me, Jesus carried my cross – He bore my sins – He paid my price. “It is finished!” Sin and its wages are finished but Love is NEVER finished.
What if the cross I must pick up and carry is the CROSS OF LOVE?! What if following Jesus means to love until death do us part and beyond the grave into eternity?
Whoa! It’s supernatural!
Jesus didn’t come for those who loved Him (there was no one who loved Him enough for that). He came because God so loved us!
Whoa! It’s supernatural!
Jesus carried, suffered, and died IN LOVE… and rose STILL IN LOVE.
Will I loose my life for Jesus’ sake? Will I love like Jesus?
Whoa! It’s supernatural! As the Holy Spirit spoke to me about loving someone by picking up the cross of Christ, I cried out, “I CAN’T! I do not know how!”
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
The Holy Spirit gently blew my mind…“You’re right, YOU CAN’T!”
“The good news of great joy has come,” the Holy Spirit said,“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)
Whoa! Christ in you, Mary! It’s Supernatural! And Jesus (Who is in the midst of two or more gathered in His name) spoke, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth…
“Now… Should we begin your CROSS training!”
And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20) We’ve got all the time in the world to love and be loved!
**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.