I wanted to take some time to write a quick post about "love" seeing as we are in the weekend of Valentine's Day. I don't know if this is a holiday you celebrate, or what. But that is not the point.
I have this blog as a tool for communicating the things God puts on my heart to people from wherever. It is a great opportunity and I am blessed by today's technology to be able to do this.
I have been through a lot in my short life dealing with love. I say dealing with because with emotional love it is something to be dealt with. It gets you and just attacks, and sometimes it's bite makes you a little loopy to the realities of life. I know this because I have been bitten by the emotional love bug. It feels great at first. Like with my first emotional relationship, I was 18 and I was so infatuated with a guy. It was definitely infatuation because I had no truth behind my feelings. Him and I barely talked about anything but our feelings. To this day, I don't even know what we talked about for hours. Seems like such a waste of time now. I thought I would die if I didn't love him. Then he moved and the relationship abruptly ended. I was completely emotional for months! A good way to know how you view something is how you respond when you loose it. I was complete emotionally enslaved to this love bug. Now I realize that the love I thought I had for him, had nothing to do with him, it had everything to do with me and my fantasy of who I made him to be in my head. I was infatuated with a dream. And I was completely set on marrying that dream.
It is so important for us human beings to have the right perspective on things. We are surrounded by deceptions, dreams and fantasies all of the time. The TV is full of lies and all it is doing is feeding our curiosity. Hmmm, I probably sound like someone who doesn't watch TV....well, I'm not, I actually watch TV a lot. But I can say, from someone who does watch it a lot, it is very hard to keep the right perspective while filling my mind with lies.
But how do we keep the right perspective and still be living "in" the world. I don't really know exactly. But all I can go off of is what God's Word says. Taking captive our thoughts to make them obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Not putting ourselves in temptation. Not leaning on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6). Filling our hearts with things that are true and live giving. What does that mean for you? Is God convicting you to turn off the TV? Is Facebook a place of fantasy for you?
Some people sadly see the Word of God or God Himself as some ruler that makes everyone bow down to Him while asking them live up to unreal standards. Sadly, they have gotten this idea from man's own mouth. The moment we tried to take over God's show we messed it up. We are humans full of flaws, and that's okay, but we shouldn't be pretending to be God. Using His Word as a tool and guideline for our lives is what we need to be focused on. Not using Him for our own gain. It will never work, He is God and we aren't.
My goal with this blog is to spur people on to seek God out for themselves. I share my experiences and what God says to me, and I pose questions which hopefully spur you on to seek God out and live fully for Him. My inspirations mean nothing if you, the reader, aren't taking it deeper.
John 3:16 is a favorite to quote in the Christian community. It talks about God loving us so much that He came down as a man with the purpose of dying for our sins. It holds the bigger image of why Jesus came. But God was already loving us from day 1. All throughout the Old Testament we see God's love for us in the form of warnings. Yes there are lots of rules in the Old Testament, but they are not separate from the messages in the New Testament. We as a society see love as something that makes us feel good and requires us to give the same back to the person. But that isn't love. Love is in itself a personal choice. God chooses to love us, and He chooses to overlook our sins and give us eternity. He chose to have a plan for our redemption the moment we started sinning after creation. And he chooses to love people who do not believe in Him. He is a God with the full ability to kill someone in a moment, but even with all the people spitting in His face and pleading with Him to play show and tell, He chooses to love them and not kill them. God doesn't rely on emotions. He is too truthful and concerned to love us with something fleeting. Yet, we respond to Him in emotions?? Hmmm...and He still loves us. (I am so glad He is God and no human being is!)
The Old Testament's purpose was to lay out the perfect life of a person who loved the Lord. And in addition, it's purpose was to prove that we weren't perfect and therefore we couldn't live up to the standard. This was so that we would realize we needed help, we needed a Savior.
Now, this is how I see God's Word. I don't try to chop it up and put my own understanding on it as if I'm little miss scholar and can somehow figure out God. I know I can't. I am a simple girl who just loves God. And I take Him and His Word at it's meaning. So this is how I see the Word of God. I do believe the way I see His Word as truthful and can be tested with scripture. But don't live off of my perception of God's Word, go study it for yourself.
The Old Testament has to be a part of our personal study especially when we are looking at Christ, because God laid out the red carpet for Christ with the Old Testament. 1) With sin started in Genesis 2) With the rebellion of the Israelite's 3) With us not being able to be righteous on our own. We realized our need for Jesus because of the Old Testament. And now with Jesus, we can look at the Old Testament as a friend. As a guidance. The sacrifices are paid for by the blood of Jesus, and now through Him we can be righteous. We still have a flesh, and sin, and the world which is full of those deceptions and fantasies. But we can get better because we have a great Savior, and a guide book that is 52 books long. There's so much in it!
So what does this all mean in "love"?
Where is your love coming from?
It should be from the perspective of God's love being consistent and true and beneficial. It should be from knowing no matter what the ruler of the universe who has been there all along, throughout all of history has made a way for you to be a righteous person. His Word has been given to you for a purpose, so that you could rely on it. This world is full of immediate satisfaction. We are a world of having to see and touch everything. God understands that. So He sent His Words down to us and through much work of people who loved God before us we have it in the form of a book, accessible to almost everyone!
Love is not about us. It's about God. He created it. He's the One who uses it properly. He is the One who teaches it to us. He's the reason we are on earth. And the sooner we see that and love it out....others will learn to love with a proper perspective too. We won't fix the world, Jesus will always be needed, but we as individuals can be a better representation of God's love and stop trying to be God.
Don't take my word for it....go study...
:)
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