Love In This Moment
Love Without Limits, prt. 2
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
January 10, 2010
1 Chronicles 16:34 (TNIV)
34 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
1 John 4:10 (TNIV)
10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us...
Some of you know that several weeks ago I went away for three days of silent prayer at Manresa Jesuit Retreat House. You are assigned a spiritual director when you get there -- someone who can help you listen to God -- and my spiritual director said, "What do you want to have happen while you are here?" I said, "I want to know God loves me always, and get out of this pattern I have of separating myself from him."
I know from years of pastoring that there are a lot of pastors that are that way. And if there are a lot of pastors that are that way, you know that a lot of people in our churches are that way. I see it all the time. Some hurting Christian couple comes in to see me and I say, "Where is God in all of this," and they look at me like I've just spoken Hebrew to them. They are church people. They go to church together and maybe small group together. Maybe they are members of their church. They each want God in their life, yet their daily interactions are often without love, characterized by things like coldness, irritability, lack of respect, jealousy, competition, suspicion of each other's motives, rudeness, insensitivity, manipulation, stubbornness, defensiveness, hostility, and childishness. Where is God in those ways of interacting? The truth is that we cannot act in these ways when we are rooted in the love of God. When we are rooted in love then love is pervasive, moving in us and through us, not just when things are going well, but also when things are NOT -- not just when our partner is thrilled with us, but even when they are disappointed and angry with us. The only way we can love at certain times and then not love at other times is to have times where we separate from God's love and pursue our own interests.
That is what is happening in a relationship like this. Both partners, well-intentioned as they may be, habitually separate from God's love and cast out on their own. Their desire to win the argument overtakes their desire to love and be loved. Their desire to give the other person a piece of their mind overtakes their desire to live in peace. And so in many ways in our human relationships, this is our story. It is what I call our noble tragedy. The human story is the story of people who deeply long to love and be loved but who are trapped in fear and cannot do either as well as they would like to. It is the story of people who are in fact dearly and deeply loved by God, the one who is both the source and standard of love, but who nevertheless struggle to live in the love that is there. We can learn about it, talk about it, sing about it, but we often live and act as if it's not there at all. What happens in those moments?
That noble tragedy was our topic last week -- our struggle to love and be loved. And I promised you last week that after setting up the struggle, I would be talking to you this week about God's love -- because those struggles we have -- the fights and fears -- whenever they take place they take place with the infinite love of God clearly available right at that exact moment. It is not as if God loves us when we act wonderfully and hates us when we misbehave. God's love is freely available always - the question is how do we come to live in it? How do we think about it and let it get into us and shape our minds and hearts and words and actions? How do we live, in THIS PRESENT MOMENT, in the love of God?
You may not be consciously aware of it, but some of you are in the process of bettering yourself so that you can find God -- improving yourself so that you can know and experience God's love and grace --trying to root certain tendencies and habits out of your life so that they do not hinder your life in God. But the so that puts you in charge. If you have to do this or that so that God can show up, then God's presence is in your hands, not God's. God and his love and grace are then limited because while you strive to improve yourself for some future time, you miss God's love and grace that are available to you in THIS MOMENT. And that is my message to you this morning. Not only that you are loved by God, but that you are loved by God right now -- in this moment -- just as you are. The failures and shortcomings that you are working furiously to eliminate so that you can know God -- they are no obstacle for him. But they obviously are for YOU!
Parents, let's put on our parenting hats. Are your children growing into their identities a bit more every day? Of course. Are they in that sense, "bettering themselves," for the future - studying and getting grades so they can go to college and do what they want to do with their lives and serve their communities? Of course! And all this hard work, the excellent grades, getting into a great college and making a lot of money -- is all of that SO THAT you will be more present to them, more available to them, or love them more at some future time?
Or is it in fact just the opposite? Isn't it true that right now --in these critical moments -- while they live with you in your house, while they are growing, while they have so much left to learn -- don't you want to be available to them as intensely as possible RIGHT NOW -- in THIS PRESENT MOMENT? Of course! Because you realize that they need you. They need your love and guidance and input and direction, and they also need to know that you love them for who they are, not for what they do.
So why do we operate toward God as if it's different? Why do we carry with us a sense that if I could only be like this or like that, I could have God closer to me, or I will know God's love better at some future time? Why do we think that being known and loved by God depends on getting our act together?
2 Corinthians 6:2 (TNIV)
2 For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
Now is the time to know God, to live in his favor, to be saved from yourself and out of yourself and all of your efforts and into love and joy. This moment is all there is. It's all you have. No other moments after this one are assured to you, and so it is true that if you cannot experience God and love God and know God now, then you cannot do it ever. It is a symptom of something gone awry in the church that church people do not know how deeply we are loved. And the reason this message isn't made clearer to us in the church is because once you come to know how intensely, how deeply, how completely, how steadfastly, how joyfully, how graciously you are loved by God, the church cannot own you. Catholics control you by making you feel guilty and that keeps you dependent on the church. Protestants control you by reminding you how much work is involved, and that keeps you dependent on us because here's where we keep inspiring you to work harder. But NOW is the time of God's favor. Not after you assuage your guilt or a priest pardons you. Not after you fix your marriage or stop swearing or smoking or drinking. Not after you get your temper under control or stop looking at pornography or stop gossiping. The time of God's favor is NOW.
Psalm 95:6–8 (TNIV)
6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice,8 “Do not harden your hearts...
Today!! At that instant when your spouse says something hurtful, you can know God's love and live in it, and not respond from your ego, from pride, from defensiveness, from hurt, from past baggage. Today! In that moment when you are tempted by lust, tempted by gossip, tempted by pride, by jealousy -- even if you DO give in to these things, you are LOVED! Do you love your children any less when they go astray, when they do things that hurt you or themselves? Of course not! No matter how we feel about their mistakes, the love doesn't change.
Recently one of my girls said to me, "I know I do things that must disappoint God." And I said, "Sweetheart, someday you'll understand that even disappointment comes from love. In those rare times mom and I are disappointed with you, it's because we love you! We dream huge dreams for you, and we don't want to see you take anything less than what we know you are capable of!" I went on to explain parental love like this.
"If you and I were at the mall tomorrow, and out of nowhere you took out a knife and stabbed some girl in the chest and killed her, I would be overwhelmed with ten thousand emotions. I wouldn't know what to think or feel or do. But there's one thing I do know. I'd be there by your side at every moment. Your arrest. Your arraignment. I'd visit you every day. And at your trial, if I was given a chance, I would plead with the court to show you mercy -- not because you would deserve it, and not because my love for you is heroic. It's simply because I can't help myself. I don't know how to do anything other than love you and desire your happiness and feel humbled and privileged to be your dad. That's how I'm wired. That's what it means for a parent to love a child."
Parents, are you with me? Okay, now let's look at this.
Matthew 7:9–11 (TNIV)
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
How dare anyone assume that our love for our own children runs deeper than God's love for HIS children. How dare the church, or any denomination, or any pastor, or any teacher, put yes-buts on God's love! Yes, but only if you're Catholic, or yes, but only if you're Protestant. Or even Yes, but only if you're a Christian! I don't want to get into universalism and I'm not saying we don't rely and depend on the sovereignty of Jesus and his sufficiency, but we are told right here in black and white how deeply we are loved and we have no right to attempt to marginalize or control that love. And the extent to which you and I have struggled to live in that love is the extent to which the message has been qualified with yes buts, until we are certain that we are included in one of those yes buts, and we'd better pull it together so that we can experience this "boundless" love. And nearly every person sitting here this morning doesn't locate himself in the infinite love Jesus is talking about, but rather in one of the yes buts that has been put upon you by your parents, by the church, by whoever, until you are perfectly capable of hearing about God's love, nodding your head, and then living as if it doesn't apply to you. Because most of us are convinced that somehow it doesn't. It must not apply if I drink too much. It must not apply if I never go to church anymore. It must not apply if I have doubts. It must not apply if I am gay. It must not apply if I am a Democrat in a conservative church or a Republican in a liberal church. It must not apply if I'm Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist or humanist.
The thing that shocked the Jewish world about Jesus was that he was a Jew who freely offered God's love not just to religious Jews, but to those who were not particularly observant, to those in blatant sin, to those who were believed by all the religious people to be yes-buts. Go home, get out your Bibles, and see if you can find one time where Jesus ever had anyone pray a prayer of salvation, or make a "decision for Christ." Jesus, in fact, tended to forgive the sins of people who weren't even asking for anything more than physical healing. "Don't get too close to that guy -- he'll forgive your sins."
Now I'm all for theology. But our theology must begin with what God's Word clearly tells us about his love. That passage I selected where Christ compared God's love to our own is pretty powerful. We cannot sustain any view of God that allows us to think of ourselves as more loving parents than God. Jesus specifically invites us to compare how we treat our children and challenges us that God will love us so much more, so let's engage him on that. Let's assume that God will act toward us in ways AT LEAST as loving as we'd act toward our own children. Then Jesus encourages us to realize God will love us a good deal more!
Even though I have been a Christian most of my life, and a pastor for 15 years, I have always been capable of reading or even memorizing vast passages of scripture, but totally miss that it was for me, right in that present moment, in the very condition in which I was when I learned it. I used to have this mindset that I was always learning scripture and praying so that I could become a certain kind of person, and when I was that person, I would then know that I was loved by God and would be able to live in the peace that this knowing brings. Now I realize that these words are for me NOW.
When I was on my prayer retreat a few weeks ago, there was a precise moment that this sunk in - when I was missing my family and wanting to go home the first night. I struggled pretty badly for several hours, but then something dawned on me. I asked myself, "Wait - is God in this? Is God available to you now, as you feel separated from good things, and lonely?" And I realized that was the reason I had gone to Manresa in the first place, to begin establishing the habit of looking to God not so that I would be perfect for a later time, but for grace in the present moment.
And so I have been learning to do so -- learning to live right now under the loving gaze of God. Here's a section of Romans 8 we use all the time here at Wildwind, but when I was at Manresa I determined to apply scripture to my life, my heart, my situation, right now in this moment. So I kind of wrote my own version. I want to close with this this morning.
Romans 8:35; 37-–39 (TNIV)
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Or work, or busyness, or temptations, or fears, or lack of discipline, or laziness, or wrong doctrine, or bad choices, or anything else?)
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (and loves us still).
For I am convinced that neither death (as scary as it is) nor life (scarier still), neither angels (with the security they provide), nor demons (with the fear they bring); neither the present (with its dull demands), nor the future (with its uncertain terrors), nor any powers (including my own); neither height (being “on fire” for God) nor depth (my depressions and dark places), nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
