Responding to Love

John 14:15, 21, 23-24 (NIV) -

“If you love me, keep my commands..."

"Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them...”

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me."

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Love is a curious thing. We humans go through life experiencing it in countless different ways and to varying extremes, whether it be the love of a parent, of a friend, of a pet, of a spouse or even, for a small handful of people, the fleeting love and admiration of society. For many, love sadly becomes something twisted and distorted, until it becomes either a source of pain and anger or a motivation for cruelty and selfishness.

Most of these loves are incomplete and imperfect because they are human expressions of love. They tend to be selfish at times, lulling us into passivity at others, in some cases even actively holding us back from stepping into everything God has prepared for us. We, and the rest of humanity with us, want a love that accepts us as we are without ever requiring us to address our faults and flaws - one that allows us to be comfortable doing whatever we want to do while still giving us that little boost of inspiration and self-soothing when things inevitably take a turn for the worse.

However, there is one love that flies in the face of all this. It is a love that is complete, perfect, generous, and pro-active. It comforts us in our grief and sorrow but never allows us to become content with sitting in our own filth of sin, instead revealing our brokenness and imperfection to us and empowering us to get up, walk out, and be cleaned. It is not comfortable and is often painful instead, but only ever for the sake of making us into something better, brighter, and more beautiful, and so that we will not have to feel the lasting pain that we would otherwise have carried if we had not dealt with our issues. It is a love that, if we are extremely fortunate, we may experience in part from one or two human beings in our lifetimes. It is the love of God, and it is a love that inspires us to change.

It's not anything superficial, either. When I think back on some of the crushes I've had in the past, they did draw a kind of change out of me, true. However, if I'm really honest with myself, those changes were all external - things like taking extra care to brush my teeth in the morning, or putting on a couple sprays of cologne so I'd smell nice if I bumped into my crush. God's love, on the other hand, draws a deeper, richer change our of us. As God comments to the prophet Samuel when sending him to anoint David:

"The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7b (NIV)

God isn't concerned with how we look but with our character, which is why He is so insistent that our obedience be the demonstration of our love for Him. Jesus Himself emphasises this in the passages above, and two more times again in the immediately following chapter. 5 mentions in 2 chapters makes it pretty clear: Love = Obedience.

I've posted in the past about dressing in your Sunday best when coming into church on a Sunday morning, talking about it being a sign of respect for God and His house. I still hold by that entirely - God deserves our best, and that also applies to the care we show for our physical appearance when coming to worship Him together. However, there's no point in dressing up in a shirt and suit pants or a nice dress on a Sunday morning if you go home and immediately go back to ignoring God or deliberately and unrepentantly disobeying something that you know is written in His Word - all that does is invalidate your witness to the people around you, because they see they you don't even try to practice what you preach.

I'm also not saying that I do this perfectly - God knows that I have a long list of flaws and that my track record in dealing with them has been pretty poor, to say the least. I've spent my share of time wallowing in my mess, wanting to get out and be free but never feeling capable of making the changes necessary to see that happen. What I'm learning, and what I hope and pray each of you will also learn, is that it doesn't have to be difficult, all gritted teeth and clenched fists, stubbornly forcing your way into a better you. Love - real love - is not forceful but gentle, so why should the response to it be any different?

For those of you who, like me, have spent a long time struggling to live how you know God would want you to live, maybe there needs to be a shift in your mindset (although I suppose you already guessed that). Here's my suggestion based on some recent experiences - stop trying to force it and, instead, ask God to give you grace to respond to His love. Then, just focus on spending time with Him.

That could be reading 5-10 verses of the Bible each morning. It could be spending 3 minutes thanking Him for all the wonderful things in your life, and asking for strength and grace to get through the not so wonderful parts. It could be setting a 5 minute timer and sitting in silence with a notepad and paper, ready to write down any thoughts that come to mind so you can learn to listen to and recognise His voice more clearly. As I heard said recently, in an eternal kingdom, small wins are big wins and small changes are big changes. Start small; start somewhere. As you grow closer to God, He will give you the grace to keep going and to grow closer still.

I pray that you all have a beautiful day and come to know the Presence of God more closely, as I'm learning to. Until next time, guys! 😁