Chapter Four: Face to Face with Love
In the opening poem, the author prays the following:
“Refusing all my offers
To earn Your love,
To win Your gaze,
To deserve Your smile,
You wrap Your heavy love around me,
Until my anxious arguments subside.”
I have experienced this kind of internal arguing with the love of God when I have gotten quiet long enough to listen to His words of affection for me even when I have felt a failure. As Dana alludes to in this poem, there is something so strong in us that wants to earn and deserve His affections, and His unrelenting jealous love towards weak humans (towards me)is offensive to the flesh. To truly accept that His love for me is unchanging even in my worst moments is devastating to the fallen human drive to be accepted because of performing well.
But I’m discovering more and more that it is in this place of saying “yes” to His unconditional love and acceptance of me that I am being liberated more and more from the ties that bind me to the fear of man. I find that I’m increasingly free from the bondages of sin, both the subtle internal bondages as well as external bondages.
Coming face to face with love is, in some ways, more painful than it is glorious; at least in the early stages of finding the courage to let God love me.
I’m reminded of a song that I heard sung spontaneously recently based on John 13 where Jesus washes the feet of His disciples. The singer was singing out the inner protesting that goes on in us when Jesus, the God-Man, wants to wash our feet: (paraphrased: “I’d rather work hard for You, build buildings and great ministries, give up everything, than to allow You to wash my feet…”
Candler asks this question: “How could the magnificent, brilliant God who is perfect and holy and glorious fall in love with weak human beings who are fallen and broken and sinful?” The revelation that hit her as she sought an answer to this was that He is a Bridegroom God; in other words, His very nature is that of a person in love. She says, “I had lost sight of the irrational, lovesick part of love and…had been trying to reason my way through an illogical reality.”
The Truth of His Love/Receiving His Love
“…Our natural minds cannot and will not make sense of it. So long as we remain in the position of human reasoning, we can reel ourselves round and round the issue, and we will never receive the truth of His love…truth is not determined by our logic. Truth is defined by the One who is Truth. And the One who has set His zealous affections on weak human beings is the Way, the Truth and the Life. What is true is what is found within His heart.”
He yearns for humans to receive His love, so how can we do this? First, I must have revelation of His desire for me and revelation of Who He is as the Lover of my soul. Then I must actually receive the love of God as He reveals it to me, opening my heart wide to it and drinking freely of His unconditional love.
This is a progressive and slow process, generally speaking. In practical terms it means:
· Regularly placing my heart before Him, exposing it to His great and burning heart of love. This is something David did constantly, as seen so well in the Psalms that he wrote and in statements like, “I set the Lord before me always…” (Psalm 16).
· Filling my mind with the Scriptures, particularly those that speak of His emotional makeup.
· Singing and speaking and praying the written Word over my heart again and again.
Little by little we find our inner being transformed and becoming less fearful and less driven and less anxious.
Repetition of His Love
Repetition is very key to truth sinking deeply into the inner being. “We have weak hearts and feeble memories. What He told us yesterday about His pleasure in us seems to be distant today. We so easily drift from truth and lose touch with the intimacy we have known only yesterday.”
We need to hear His love for us continually and throughout our life. I will never outgrow my need to know and hear how He love and enjoys me, His daughter. When I begin to drift away from this, I become more subject to the pressures of people’s opinions and my own expectations and to disappointments in myself or in others, etc.
It is the deep revelation and acceptance of such unconditional and unrelenting love that wins the human heart over to voluntary and radical love for Jesus. He will never force a person to love Him, but an ongoing journey into the emotions of the heart of God will win the believer over to full abandonment and lovesickness for Him, a love that is perhaps most dramatically seen in the extravagant offering of Mary of Bethany. Her extravagance was a reflection of what she had experienced from Jesus.
Holy Spirit, come and reveal the love of God the Father and of Jesus the Son to our hearts, as only You can do! We say “yes” to your great love and thank You that you receive that “yes” even though it’s weak.
For next week we will read chapter five: Personal Receiving.
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Hello All.
ReplyDeleteCinderella….this fairy tale and the others conjures up memories of my youth. Sure, I loved the stories, but what I enjoyed was that the “good” overcame the “bad.” At the same time, I could not relate to the relational/intimate aspect of them. It was difficult to do, and most of all, I didn’t even realize that it was unusual to not relate in that way. It seems to me, as I look back, that it was due to a lack of personhood and/or a sense of being. There was a cry for something…something that each of us need…maternal love.
I suppose, when I became a Christian, the relational very slowly started to change…very slowly. But years later, when I began to discover in my inner being that God loves me, really loves me, it began to get through my thick skull and heart. Then having children and grandchildren helped in this area….but my heart still needed healing.
Dana stated in this chapter, “the truth of God came in like a flood against my false ideas about God and realigned the crooked places, making them straight…I realized that I had lost sight of the irrational, lovesick part of love and that I had been trying to reason my way through an illogical reality…”
“It is a Love surpassing knowledge that He has bestowed upon us. Our natural minds cannot and will not make sense of it…truth is not determined by our logic.”
I really sense that this truth of God is the crux of being able to live unto and to love Him, who is so personal. He is preparing my heart to be part of His bride as well as learn to respond to the love of the bridegroom. Other things lose their appeal.
More recently, in my own sense of barrenness and emptiness, I still had the sense that my spirit had been taking in so much of God’s character—The reality of who He is and I have been extremely grateful for that. It is wonderful to have even a limited inner knowledge of what the Lord really is doing in me and in His church. This opens the way for what Dana mentions, “The only way that our hearts are expanded to receive is by the supernatural broadening of our capacities through the divine stretchings of hunger, longing and desire. These inner forces carve out space within us and make room for love.” The “hidden workings” of my heart needed to be revealed so that I could see the Real, and Love could be revealed to me.
As stated, “Our view of Him and of ourselves will undergo immense conversion.”
This is where the reality of inner healing takes place…it is gradual most of the time, but it is taking place. Oh that this so personal a love can be shared with one another.
Thanks, Nita, for your blog on this chapter. Appreciate all the insight the Lord gives you during the reading of these, oh, so helpful books. I have a lot to learn.