A Much Safer Subject to Think About

Some years ago I had a pivotal experience in my growth in understanding what God is like. While I knew the love of God in my life before this, the revelation of His love for me in this particular moment hit me unlike ever before and it set me on a path that I've been on ever since.

I had gotten sick just before leaving on a flight for Mexico City, and I got worse in the following days after arriving there. One night the pain in my body reached a point where I wasn't sure if I'd make it through the night. As I lay in bed hardly able to move at all and feeling like I could die, everything became clear and black and white to me; I sensed the Lord asking me, "Nita, what is the one thing you are most sure about?" Without hesitating, I answered, "...that I love You, Lord."

I sensed His kind response to me: "That's good but there is something greater, and that is that I love you!" In that moment the eyes of my heart were opened to the reality that what is most trustworthy and sure is the unstoppable, unrelenting, unfailing, never-ending love of God.

C.S. Lewis says, "On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him." The apostle John says that we love Him because He loved us first. Our love for Him may be real and sincere but it is His unfailing and unconditional love for us upon which we must rest and build our lives or else we are left with the burden of religion, ever working and striving to be deserving of love.

The love of God for humans is best understood in the cross of His Son, Jesus. In the sacrificial offering of Himself on our behalf, God in Christ has made clear that He is for us at whatever cost to Himself!

Because God's love for us sinners is more secure ground to stand on than our love for Him, we can only find our hearts anchored in peace as we contemplate His love rather than ours.

In our weak condition, we humans are severely bent towards contemplating (giving our concentration to) just about everything else but His love, so it is the work of the Spirit in our lives with our cooperation that empowers us to look at Him. The following are simple suggestions about ways to cooperate with Him in this practice of thinking about God's love.

First, ask the Spirit of Jesus to strengthen your heart to say 'yes' to His love so that the proneness toward not believing His goodness and love is corrected with each 'yes.' The most difficult time to receive His love is when you have failed, but it's also the most important time to freely receive His affection for you.

Next study the cross by simply taking time to read and/or listen to the stories about Jesus' death and resurrection and the way He lived His earthly life with weak, failing humans. Picture yourself and your fears and failures in Him as He died. Ask the Lord to help you understand why He suffered and died so that you get a glimpse of your value to Him (Rom.5:8 "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.").

And finally, practice thinking about His love throughout your day; ask the Spirit to help you see the daily little comments or incidents through the lens of the cross. Develop the ability to see the love and affection of the Father coming at you constantly, whether your experiences are positive or negative, knowing that He is with you in all of it.

As we think/contemplate on this "safer subject" and drink deeply of that well, the overflow of His love will spill out onto Him and others.

Love Enables Us to Overlook a Multitiude of Sins

Some time ago when troubled by a particular situation, I was asking the Lord for understanding of why I was troubled. As I waited, the word "religion" came to mind. I remembered something that I've observed in the New Testament stories about Jesus. Whenever He would heal someone or there would be partying over His presence among the sinners, the religious people were unhappy. They couldn't look past the details of the law's requirements in order to celebrate the bigger and more important issues of forgiveness and joy and healing that Jesus' presence always brought to those who would receive Him.

I had a fresh glimpse into an aspect of religion: it majors on minors and is unable to overlook what it defines as 'lawless'. In his book, Repenting of Religion, Greg Boyd says that in religion, rules trump everything else.

In our proneness towards finding life from judging what's "right" and "wrong" (both in our own lives and those of others), we get easily sidetracked from loving and accepting others who are experiencing Jesus by critiquing whether a person's behavior is "right" or "wrong". Meanwhile Jesus, in His love and affection for the sinner, is able to overlook the smaller issues and celebrate the bigger issue of healing and freedom with the one He has touched. Love empowers us to overlook a multitude of sins.

In the particular situation referred to at the start of this post, there had been a breakthrough in the person's life, and the issue over which I was troubled was inconsequential in comparison. I was in danger of missing the Lord's joy over the person involved because of my concern over details of the "law". Because He opened my understanding, I was able to celebrate with Him and with the person...I'm grateful!

Moving on God's Trajectory is to Dare to Ask Questions

One of the great problems of organized religion is that it traps us into forms and mindsets that no longer serve God's purposes. This is true of the most vibrant movements in the church. The setting up of organizations to facilitate the fresh work of God begins the downward move towards dependence on systems to run and control things. This is hard to avoid, but the biggest danger of it is that we are generally unaware of what is happening and give ourselves completely to what we have established. This then tends to set in concrete something that is meant to remain dynamic and ready to change in any given moment as new generations come along. Even when a new generation comes along with vision to bring positive change, they encounter a system that has hardened and unable to change in any significant way.

One example of this is the charismatic movement that burst on the scenes in the '60s. I was in on the beginnings of that movement when it was fresh and vibrant. Today, although much of the language has remained the same, it has gone the way of all movements and is stuck in its own traps.

There are always 'prophets' who are alert to this hardening and address it in a variety of ways. That is true today as it has been throughout history. I'm not referring to people who are labeled prophets or to people who may have 'prophetic ministry' but to those who are awake to this reality and are calling God's people to new ways of seeing and understanding God and others. There is a great wealth of writing that is going on now that is challenging the status quo of the Christian world. Among them are people like Albert Nolan, Brian McLaren, Sharon Baker, Renee Girard, Walter Wink, Walter Brueggeman, Phyllis Tickle...and many more. These are not stereotypical prophets but are scholars and pastors and leaders calling for God's people to look at God through a different set of eyeglasses and realize that God is constantly moving forward and moving us with Him. If you read the Bible through the lens of a trajectory, you begin to realize that God has had His people on a trajectory that has continued to this day.

To dare to keep moving on that trajectory is to dare to ask questions and to sort through what we have inherited.

One well-known man in more recent Christian history, Watchman Nee, understood this concept and wrote the following:

"...We cannot overestimate the greatness of our heritage, nor can we be sufficiently grateful to God for it. But if today you try to be a Luther or a Wesley, you will miss your destiny. You will fall short of the purpose of God for this generation, for you will be moving backwards while the tide of the Spirit is flowing on. The whole trend of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a forward trend.

"God's acts are ever new. To hold on to the past, wanting God to move as He has formerly done, is to risk finding yourself out of the main stream of His goings. The flow of divine activity sweeps on from generation to generation, and in our own it is still uninterrupted, still steadily progressive."

Truth is Meant to be Loved, not Always Known

Humans love to know things and the internet has taken this to a whole new level. I believe one primary reason we want to know and be certain about things is that it gives us a sense of control over our lives. Bit by bit as I lose certainty about some of the information I've believed about God and the Bible (subjects I thought I knew a lot about a few years ago), I'm discovering joy and peace in not being so sure about a lot of things. I'm discovering that to "know" in God doesn't mean being certain about information related to Him; in fact, I'm growing more in love now that I'm not as sure about it all. "Knowing" in God includes honest doubting and questioning and not knowing. Truth is meant to be loved, not always known. George MacDonald understood this and said the following:

"To know God is to be in the secret place of all knowledge; and to trust him changes the whole outlook surrounding mystery and seeming contradictions and unanswered questions from one of doubt or fear or bewilderment to one of hope. The unknown may be some lovely truth in store for us, which we are not yet ready to apprehend. Not to be intellectually certain of a truth does not prevent the heart that loves and obeys that truth from getting the goodness out of it, from drawing life from it because it is loved, not because it is understood."  (from MacDonald's book, "The Lady's Confession")

"Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to rouse the honest heart. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood...Doubts must precede every deeper assurance. For uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed."   (from "Discovering the Character of God")