The Ride of a Lifetime

I reached for the metal triangle holds on the park swing and gave a push. Soft, cushy fingers grasped the taught chains, elbows tensed, and a squeal filled the air.  "This is love," echoed in my head, "not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10). Pause. "This is love." Love is active. Love is pushing a swing. Love is preparing a meal. Love is listening. God loved. God gave.

 

The action, the love, had little to do with the fellow in the swing. All he did was ask. God's love for me has little (nothing actually) to do with my earning or deserving it. He loves because He is love. He is defined by love. Without partiality. He is. Love.

God's love is constant, eternal, unlimited, unconditional. Why then do we struggle to take hold of it? The apostle Paul pointed to suffering. Suffering, our own or that of others, can easily misdirect our focus. Rather than trusting and looking to God for wisdom and strength, we question His love(Ephesians 3:13-14).

We look for miraculous intervention in a specific situation and fail to acknowledge the miraculous intervention that has already taken place: God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.... He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 5:12, 8:32).

God loves. He continues to love. Could He change the circumstances? In a heartbeat. Could He remove people from my life? No question. But "as for God, His way is perfect" (Psalm 18:30). The one thing more impossible than circumstance or people is the human heart. What turns a heart to worship and trust God alone? Only broken idols and withered dreams. What turns a life of self-gratification to Godly contentment? Only emptiness and refilling.

Just as human love is received through acknowledgment of the gift, spiritual love is received through faith. God has expressed His love. It is ours to ask, grab the chains of the swing and hold on for the ride of a lifetime. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

"Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,  to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."(Ephesians 3:13-21 NKJV).

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.  Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,  nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39, NKJV)