Falling in Love

I have yet to be in love, but I think I can safely say what it is to be loved.

Often I wonder if that may be the reason I'm still single. When you know what real love is, it's hard to settle for anything less, and so it should be.

When I first began to understand what true love was I was fourteen. I'd had my first sexual experience with a boy who had been pestering me for a year or so. I'd said no several times over but on this particular evening he said all the right things, and surprising even myself, I gave in.

Young, naive fourteen year old me thought sexual intimacy was true intimacy. That the only way to be loved and show love was through baring and sharing yourself physically to and with another person.

Conversely, I felt very alone. The act itself, that physical show we had put on, had in fact changed nothing in reality. Instead of feeling closer to him, I felt we were miles apart, and all I wanted him to do was hold me. This wasn't what being loved was supposed to feel like. Being loved was supposed to make you feel special, intimately known; not a baring of the flesh but a baring of the soul, real, raw intimacy rather than an elaborate ceremony of make-believe.

Real love was romantic.

There was someone I hadn't paid much attention to those fourteen years. He'd always been around, and although I'd seen and heard a lot about him I'd never really taken the time to know him. In the days following he was with me, holding my hand, telling me he didn't think any less of me, that conversely he wanted me to be his more than ever before, so that he could protect me and love me and know me and be loved and known by me in return.

You see whilst I had barely taken notice of him those fourteen years; busy being caught up in my own superficialities, he'd been at work loving me from the very beginning. All this time he'd been putting himself in my way,  getting himself talked up by my friends, working tirelessly to make me notice him, and I'd ignored him at every turn. He'd pursued me passionately and relentlessly, never giving up, not caring if in the end all his love was unrequited, and instead had just loved me and loved me and loved me unceasingly; like a parent loves a child.

And now here we were; me at my worst and him the same as he'd always been; waiting patiently, loving and loving and loving me, looking out for me.

And this time, I looked at my situation; my experience of love, how I saw myself, how I felt, and I realised I needed that radical love in my life, I needed him.

He loved me the right way; not doing so because he would gain anything from it but because he couldn't help it. Loving me came as naturally to him as breathing came to me.

So I said yes to loving him. I made a decision that I'd be his as he had always been mine.

Like any other relationship, it requires work, but nine years on we're still together; him loving me in the same relentless, passionate and purposeful way he always did, and me trying to love him right back.

You see when I realised the lengths God had gone to get my attention and to steal my heart, I had no choice but to accept him, no other decision made sense. God was a romantic; paying attention to every detail so that it was just right, chasing me down at every turn, even at the risk of me rejecting Him.

And so maybe my expectations of love are too high, but now that I have experienced, raw, unselfish, devoted, kind, forgiving and generous love, nothing less will ever suffice.

The Gospel : In Bullet Points

First things first, my intention is not to offend anyone with this short summary of what Christianity is all about...my intention is to simply put it out there in a straightforward way as a starting point for people who have not got a clue what it's about.

The reason being..I wonder if people don't like the gospel (good news) because they don't hear or see it. If all they hear and see is judgement, hate and a list of rules... they are not going to want to know more, they're going to run in the opposite direction, and so they should...none of that sounds like good news to me either.

So, for those of you reading this that have never really heard what Christianity is all about, this is for you.

Here goes:

• Christianity in one word is probably best described as forgiveness. We believe that Jesus died for us, thereby paying the price for the sins of each and every one of us (past, present and future) and in exchange giving us His perfection and righteousness (lack of sin). 《1 Peter 2.24》
• We believe that in dying for us Jesus, opened up the way for us to have a purposeful, loving relationship with God the father and therefore live life through Him, and as a result live better.

That's pretty much it. The bible is all about the situation we were in before Christ came to earth (in need of forgiveness), what happened when He came to earth (paid the penalty for our sin and brought forgiveness), and the new situation we can be in if we choose to accept Him in our lives (living a supernatural life -beyond natural, realer, deeper and more vibrant than what we see and do day-to-day).

I could go on..but I wanted to keep this short and sweet. The gospel is that Jesus died to set us free from lives full of sin and all that go with them and enable us to live a life of righteousness with Him, our closest, most trustworthy and faithful friend; leading the way.

Agape: A Poem

He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds;

To those who are hurting, He says 'Come and know relief'

To those who have been betrayed, He says, 'I too have been betrayed, but I'll never turn my back on you'

To those who have never known love, He says 'Get to know me, I loved you so much that I gave myself for you'.

To those who have never had a home, He says 'My father's house has many rooms'

To those who have only known death, He says 'Come and know me, I am the way to the eternal life'

To those who have no hope, He says 'I am hope, and I have good plans for you'

To those who can't forgive themselves, He says 'I forgive you'

To those who have sinned, He says 'I took your sin, have my righteousness'

To those who are lost, He says 'I am the way'

To those who are orphans, He says 'I am your father'

To those who are lonely, He says 'I'll never leave you or forsake you'

To those who are disillusioned, He says 'There's more than this, come back to me and know real life'

To those who are sad, He says 'Let me turn your tears into ones of joy'

To those who are unfulfilled, He says 'Let me give you purpose'

To those who have only ever known neglect, He shows affection.

He came for us because we were broken and needed Him. He came to show us love, to heal us, to encourage us, to save us.

We laughed at Him. We belittled Him because His ways weren't our ways. What kind of person sends a baby to save the world?

And yet when the nails pierced His hands as He bled to death on the cross for OUR sins, He did not curse us in His anguish, or pray that God strike us, He asked God to forgive us.

Agape

"Agape" - unconditional, wide-open love, as demonstrated in Jesus. Love that is fiercely passionate without being erotic, love that endures, love that sacrifices - Jesus

"But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed..." - Romans 3.21

When Jesus Christ came to earth, it was the culmination of years of planning and hard work. The Jewish people up until then had been governed by law (See Exodus 20). Law that told them not to take God's name in vain, not to covet, to rest on the Sabbath, to honour their parents and so on. The ultimate purpose of the law was to show the Jews what was right in the eyes of God, and how to live in a way pleasing to Him.

The problem with the law was that it made it impossible for the Jews to live in a way pleasing to God. No matter how carefully they watched themselves and tried to do no wrong. All it took was one sin...and they'd stepped out of God's will and into judgement.

To escape the judgement that resulted from sin, sin offerings were given to God to make atonement. God would look at the offering and not make them pay the penalty for the sin, but it still didn't really deal with the problem. The offerings didn't deal with the sin, they covered it. On the outside, it looked as if there had been a change, but the real root of the sin, originating in mankind's heart remained.


Paul talked about the strange condition of the human heart in Romans 7.15, saying 'that I will to do, that I do not practise; but what I hate, that I do.'


So there were two problems that needed to be resolved;

1. No matter how hard everyone tried to do the right thing, they couldn't.
2. Even though God forgave the sins, the root of the problem remained; the sinful nature of man's heart.

So God created Jesus; fully God and fully man.When God created Jesus, He created Him to be the final sin offering. This meant that after Him, no-one, ever, would have to offer a sin offering. Jesus came to earth, blameless and sinless; perfect.


You see Jesus role as the final sin offering was to personally take on all the sins ever committed and ever to be committed and call them His own (2 Corinthians 5.21). Taking them on, Jesus would have to pay the penalty for sin that was not his own. Romans 6.23 tells us what the penalty for sin is; it's death.


Death in the physical sense, (if you look at Genesis and the record of the fall, it tells us that as a result of the fall sin and thus death entered the world), but not only that, death to God, and separation from all that pertains from Him, all that is good, all that is love, all that is hope, all that is faith; Hell, in short.


So when Jesus cried out on the cross ' elohi elohi, lama shavakhtani?' (Mark 15.34 - HNIV) He was experiencing Hell.


On our behalf.


But it was not the end. Jesus had been a willing sacrifice, fully God and fully man. He had descended into the very depths of Hell to account for all our sins, committed and to be committed, and then He rose again to overcome death, and show that the power that was in Him was stronger than sin, and stronger than death.


He did it so that every time we sin, we are rescued from our rightful punishment; eternal separation from God. So when God looks at us, where he should see sin, darkness, and evil, He sees the face of His son, who took all our punishment on His own back so that we would no longer have to be enslaved by sin, always doing the wrong thing and constantly falling short of God's standard, but instead could be righteous, relying on a power greater than our own.


God sent Jesus so that we would be free to achieve our full potential.

This was problem one dealt with, but God was still not finished.

Romans 10.9 tells us that everyone who believes God loves them and as a result sent His son to die for them is saved. When Jesus was on earth He spent time talking to people, He spent time showing them His character; what was important to Him and good in His sight. He spent time with all kinds of people, tax collectors, women that were having affairs...nobody was too low for Him. You see in doing this, Jesus was tapping in to people's hearts.

By nature, God is relational. He loves us, He talks to us. When Jesus was on earth He wanted us to get to know Him, so that we would in turn tell others about Him. He wanted us to get to know Him so that the more we got to know Him, the more we wanted to be like Him. He wanted to instigate a change of heart, so that instead of our inclination being to do things our way, and therefore sin against Him, our most earnest desire would be to behave in a way that would please Him.


And of course, even if our desire was to please Him, He knew, as I mentioned earlier, how hard it was for us to do the right thing without help from someone outside of us and more powerful than us to do so. So when Jesus left earth for heaven, He left us the Spirit of God (sometimes called the Holy Spirit), the third member of the trinity, so that we would be able to call out to God and receive help in time of need (Hebrews 4.16) and be able to do God's will.

'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.' - Romans 8.14

Allow yourself to get to know Jesus, fall in love with Him and He will transform your life. It won't happen overnight, but you'll notice it. You'll no longer measure yourself by what you have done, can do, or what others tell you that you are, but instead will see yourself as God sees you; perfect and blameless in His sight. Your outlook on the world will change; you'll understand more clearly God's grace and what it means to be forgiven and forgive others. You'll be able to discern between what is good (of God) and evil (not of God), and you'll be able to love others as Christ has loved you.

God bless x

POST LINK: Friends With Your Spouse

Friends w/ Your Spouse

This is really weird, but I've been thinking a lot lately and talking to a couple of my friends about how I think in order for a relationship to work, people have to start on some kind of platform as friends. Leave the romance bit our for a while and look at how you just 'get on' with each other, this is part of the glue that holds us together.

Click the link above to read the article, hope you like!

LOVE

One of the big things I think you'll find most human beings, irrelevant of race, culture or religion; will agree on, is the existence of love. People explain it in different ways, and not all of them have experienced it first-hand, (which is an extremely sad thing if you think about it), but most will agree that it exists. Love of money, love of popularity, love of objects, love of people...the list could go on, but what is real love? How do we spot the real thing from the counterfeit?

Films have been made about it. Stories written about it. Chemical equations have been formulated to discuss the scientific explanation of it. Even in the bible itself we see countless examples of relationships with 'love'. Samson and Delilah, Rebekah and Isaac, David and Bathsheba, Jacob and Rachel...

But the only relationship in the bible with a love described as 'real' is that relationship between God and us:

1 John 3.16 - We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.

1 John 4.10 - This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

The love that God has for us, as described in the bible, is multi-faceted. In Hosea; we see the jealous love God has for us, like the love between a man and wife; in Jesus, we see the compassionate love God has for us, and the most popular presentation of God's love is much like the love a parent has for a child:

Jeremiah 3.19 - "I thought to myself, 'I would love to treat you as my own children!' I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land— the finest possession in the world. I looked forward to your calling me 'Father,' and I wanted you never to turn from me.

Jeremiah 31.20 - "Is not Israel still my son, my darling child?" says the LORD. "I often have to punish him, but I still love him. That's why I long for him and surely will have mercy on him.

According to the bible, our ability to love, originates from the love that God has for us:

1 John 4.19 - We love each other because he loved us first.

1 John 4.7 - Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

But probably the most notable thing about the way in which the bible defines real love, i.e. God's love, is that it is unconditional:

Romans 5.8 - But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

God's love is not a reaction to good behaviour, it is given freely to all who wish to accept it, regardless of sin. God's love is so patient, that even to those who reject Him in this life, He offers a second chance at knowing Him. God's love is so kind, that He chose to extend the capacity of it to include those who were not even relations of those whom He first made the promise of love to. God's love is so humble that it came in the form of a baby boy born to a carpenter in an animal feeding trough. God's love is so unselfish, that it gave itself up for those who did not deserve it, rewarding them with a gift they could never have earned. God's love is so hopeful that it comes with mercies new every morning. His love is so faithful that even when others renounce and deny it, it holds on. And God's love is so persistent that nothing; not life or death, not angels or demons, not fears and worries, and not even the powers of hell itself could separate us from it. [1 Corinthians 13.4-6, Romans 8.35-39]

Ephesians 3.18-19

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A Beautiful Exchange

There's a song that we sing at church sometimes, I can't remember the name of the author or the name of the song, but there are words in that song that bring a smile to my face every time I hear them:

"There upon the cross I see,

You're unfailing love for me,

the majesty and mystery,

There upon the cross.

In death you won the victory,

That echoes throughout history,

The promise of eternity,

There upon the cross."

When Jesus was nailed on the cross to die He took ALL our sin, shame and guilt with Him (2 Corinthians 5.21). When I sin, I don't let it get me down. I'm not a sinner. I am a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 2.17). I have all His righteousness because He took my sin and shame.

It's a concept few non-Christians grasp. God loved me so much, He not only sent His son to help me out of the gutter, He sent His son to take my place.

Being part of Jesus' death and resurrection; dying to sin and rising with Him, means that no matter how many sins I have committed, am committing, or will ever commit, my slate is clean. (Romans 8.1)

God is a God of second, third, fourth and fifth chances. His mercies are new EVERY morning. (Lamentations 3.22-23)

Get to know Jesus and get to know freedom.

x

A Beautiful Exchange

Hosea 2.14-15

"But then I will win her back once again.
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her there.
I will return her vineyards to her
and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope.
She will give herself to me there,
as she did long ago when she was young,
when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt."

Unending Love - Hillsong Live, God Is Able