To Love, to Be Loved
“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.” 1 John 4: 17-21 (MSG)
I promised on yesterday that I would give an update on my testimony, which actually dates back over twenty years! Has anything changed for me in twenty years – or am I yet holding on to yesterday’s victories – with no new ones today?
I can honestly say that over the last twenty years my love life has been turned inside out and upside down! Tested in ways that I could not even imagine – shaken by circumstances that seemed to throw me back even further than the beginning of my Christian journey. It seemed more than once over these past twenty years that the seeming failure of past relationships would forever prevent me from trusting myself to make new ones. There was a period of time when I almost became a recluse – believing the lies of the enemy of my soul – that I had nothing to offer anyone. All this after I had won a tremendous victory in God and had opened my heart and life to embracing people and living the life that I felt God wanted me to live!
How do you know when you grasped the abstract concepts found in Algebra? When after repeated times, you are finally able to get one side of the equal sign to match the other side. The steps to arrive at the end product may look like a fifty car train wreck – but you are no less victorious than if you had got it the first time!
I finally learned that life is like that algebra problem – sometimes it gets messy and you wish you had a pencil eraser to wipe out your mess-ups! But because life seems to be lived in ink, the only eraser we have is the blood of Jesus -
“If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth—we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin.” 1 John 1: 6-7 (MSG)
Yes, just like you, life continues to throw me curves, blows out my candle, shatters my dreams. I have had ups and downs, I have victories and I have losses. But I discovered that perfect love casts out fear, that
“What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.” Galatians 2:19-21 (MSG)
God indeed gave me true love – because He gave me Himself! As I allow Him to stand up in me – even when I fail, I can always do what Donnie McClurklin sings about –
I can get back up again, get back up again, get back up again.
God Bless you, I love you,
Maria