Drawing Near -- Better in Love

"This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."

1 John 4:9-12

Sometimes it takes a theme ushered in by a circumstance for me to sense the nearness of God. Of all the themes of life out there that persuade me to recognize God coming near, love would have to be at the top of the list.  

I heard a musician perform a song he wrote the other day and the chorus said "I'm just better in love."  Those words resonated with me and I thought, "yep, me too."  The times in my life when God gifts me with someone to very specifically love and I actually jump in without worry of the outcome and just love lavishly, I detect without a doubt the nearness of God.  I sense his pleasure because no matter if the object of my love returns it in a reciprocal way, or in any way for that matter, I am identifying with Christ in his character. He is love (1 John 4:16).  No matter what I do or do not do, he remains love.

For this season of my life I find my heart a little worn from loving in obedience, loving fully, and loving in a way that considered another better only to have it end in seeming disappointment. And yet, to identify with Christ is to take the risk to love even when it is messy. The cross, the most beautifully tragic example of perfect love, was heart-wrenchingly messy.  My imperfect attempts at sacrificial love will always be tattered and unruly, my heart will always run the risk of being worn, but my joy will be complete.  And despite the wounds a heart will most likely incur when loving fully, I can say on this messy, frustrated, and disappointed side of my own circumstance, it was and is worth it.  His nearness hovers in unhindered love and it absolutely hovers in the aftermath.  His love makes the best kind of fool (1 Corinthians 1:18) and I am just better in it.

As we contemplate the nearness of God, consider his love.  For many of us, it's the love story that draws us to Him.  He found you worth it to go to the cross. To be broken, bruised, and literally tattered for you and his ultimate glory.  If you know this Christ, his love covers you completely. Even now, I sense his love crawling up over my skin and reminding me that love is worth the risk. Love is worth feeling like a failure, it's worth rejection, and it is always worth someone else seeing a picture of Christ that beckons them to lose their lives so they might really find it.  

Draw near to God in his love.  When Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13 that "love never fails", even when earthly relationships seem contrary to that line of reason, I absolutely know Paul was right. Love never does fail.  The circumstance may look differently than anticipated but his love through us does not fail.  

Take the scary risk to be fully known in His love and to love unhindered.  His nearness is found there, it pushes us forward, and it absolutely sustains.

Consider the depth of Christ's love and let if find you.  While foolish to our self-preserving nature, within it lies transformation and nearness to the God of the universe -- and I am convinced, we are all just better in it.

"Love never fails..."

1 Corinthians 13:8