Beth's question, tucked in the middle of a paragraph on the final day of that weeks homework, hit me like a ton of bricks.
Do you realize that even your capacity to love God is completely divine and supernatural?
Human capacity – human ability. It's limited and narcissistic. As we strive for significance it is easy to pat ourselves on the back for successes and take the credit. However take an introspective look at our daily experiences and we find we have to agree with the saying, “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree?” I am not so far removed from Eve that I should forget what my capabilities or extreme willpower are. Or aren't. From helping with menial tasks to having devotions with the kids. It can all be selfishly driven under the cloak of love. I remember watching an episode of “Friends” where they were trying to perform a completely selfless act. The conclusion on the show was that it wasn't possible. Even the best examples in the Bible show what humans will do when left to their own desires. There's David with Bathsheba, a man after God's own heart; or remember Elisha's depressing descent after a miraculous Mt Carmel experience. Think back to Paul's letter to the church in Rome, left up to self we can't do what we want to do! So why would I be so surprised that I am not capable of loving God on my own willpower?
More impressive however, are the many examples in the OT and NT that display what happens when someone loves God with all their heart, soul and mind. We see Abraham willing to sacrifice his only son in faith believing that God will provide for what He promised. We see Joseph and Daniel being men of integrity and bringing Glory to God because of their unwavering faith in God. God's ultimate example in scripture however, is to be found in His son, Jesus. Christ's demonstrates His love for us through obedience to His Father to the point of dying on the cross for the wrongs we have committed.
Completely divine.
God's love for us is all the more amazing when I realize that he loved us enough to create us even though He knew we would decide to give ourselves credit for anything that seems to go well in our life or as Mother Teresa so aptly puts it – we wrongly “glory in our successes”.
Pride is one of the main reasons for my blindness to the inability to love.
C S Lewis says:
“The loves prove they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without God's help.” 144
“Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself.” 8
God desires that we love Him and others so He has given us everything we need for faith and godliness. Here are some verses I have been ingesting as I digest concepts of faith, love and purpose in community.
Ephesians 3:16-19
16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Hebrews 11:6
“without faith it's impossible to please God. Anyone who comes to Him must believe He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Ephesians 2:8, 10
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Acts 17:24-28
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
Some important parts of a life in Christ are mentioned in these verses. Faith, love, salvation and purpose. I need to have faith to believe that a loving God is my Saviour in EVERY aspect of my life. God will bless our earnest seeking and make our work significant. He will love through us as we believe that it is His love that we need.
I love this explanation by C S Lewis:
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.” 154
As Meridith Andrews sings, “The old has gone the new has come, we are reconciled by love...”
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