Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Love


I am in a loving relationship. I know what it feels like to be really loved. My devotional this morning talked about how a human person reacts and feels when they feel really loved:

"When you feel loved, really loved, your heart rushes after your lover and you treasure everything about them. When the phone rings, you hope it is them. You save their notes and letters. You long for the next meeting when you can see each other face-to-face. That's what love feels like. And the Bible, God's love letter to us, tells us over and over that we are so loved..."

The description here is exactly how I feel, and how I know my boyfriend feels about me. I have this great example of being loved yet I still struggle to believe that God could love me so much. That God could want to do nice and thoughtful things for me all the time, like my boyfriend does. That God cares about pleasing me, about making me happy, like my boyfriend does. That God wants the best for me and wants to take care of me, like my boyfriend does. I believe these things about a man, who in reality has faults in some areas. Yet I find it hard to believe these things about God, who through many years of my life that I disregarded Him still helped, cared, loved, and found ways to try to make me happy and bring good things to my life.

A pastor once told me that a loving relationship between a man and a woman, if they are doing things right, is a reflection of how Christ loves us. That we can look to how Christ loves us as a guide to how we should love and treat our significant other. Today when I thought about how loved I feel by my boyfriend, it made me realize that his love doesn't even compare to how much God loves me! I can be comforted that God doesn't take care of me and bring good things to my life only because I'm doing things right, or because I deserve them, or because I was good towards Him and so He has to be good back to me. God's primary motivation for everything He's done and is going to do for the rest of my life is actually because He WANTS to do good things because He loves me so much.

I'm going through some tough times of uncertainty and turmoil in some areas of my life. I see my boyfriend's concern and his trying to help in any way he knows how and so how can I think that God is not working on my behalf a thousand times more? He IS and my only job is to believe that He is, to remember how much He loves me, and basically just let Him love me. So why do sometimes I act like that's an impossible task?

I can do that.