Finding Love in the Right Place
When one is on the strict diet of toast and tea, there are only a few things that provide enjoyment/amusement, one of them being remote control clicking. Yet, after one too many episodes of The O.C. (as if one isn’t too many) and a couple of “romantic” comedies I only found myself feeling worse, not better. So before all cerebral matter turned into mush, I turned off the TV and tried to forget about the dysfunctional situations with which I had sympathized only moments before. However, I could not get these situations out of my head. I believe it is because I (we) have been listening to/reading about/watching the same lies day after day and year after year. How many of us, even knowing full well the reality of life, wistfully hope for a “fit for the movies” romantic experience? And maybe you have not fallen for such an idea, but how then do you keep from becoming cynical and jaded (risky precursors to settling)?
We all think we know so much about love, don’t we? Or at least so thinks the world at large. It’s a main topic for music, movies, books, conversation. But have you ever thought about the ratio of happy love songs to the ratio of songs about heartbreak and the challenge of “moving on”? And, I would be willing to bet that if you asked a lot of the happy songwriters if they could still sing that happy song about the same person as when they wrote it, they would probably say that actually had to go back and write a “moving on” song about that person.
Whatever happened to forever?
In his song entitled “Forever” (classic), Chris Brown sings:
I won’t let you fall girl, let you fall girl…
It’s like I waited my whole life for this one night
It’s gon’ be me, you, and the dance floor
Cuz we only got one night
Double your pleasure, double your fun
And dance forever-ever-ever
Forever-ever-ever
Forever-ever-ever
So he’s not going to hurt her, because they will dance forever. But there’s a catch here. “We only got one night.” And this is how “love” is so often approached. Love passionately and intensely but when it comes to commitment, be like the guy in the pay-as-you-go plan. It is a love that is as stale and artificial as the candy hearts sitting uneaten in the bowl on the table. It might look tempting, but it is only a cheap imitation of that which is real.
In her song “Love, Where is your Fire?” Brooke Fraser sings:
Love, where is your fire? I’ve been sitting here smoking away
Making signals with sticks, and odd ends and bits
But still there’s no sign of a flame
Impostors have been passing, offering a good feeling glow
But I’m holding out for what You are about
An inferno that burns to the bone
Some urge me to be temperate, lukewarm will never do
Cause I, I wanna blaze with you
So I’m holding my heart out to you
The impostors are everywhere, offering things that can bring a little warmth into your life. But like a lone burning sheet of paper, the flame will quickly go out. The singer vows to hold out for something more.
On Valentine’s Day, I noticed more than one Facebook status updated to John 3:16, which is the verse depicting the realest, truest, most perfect love one could ever experience…and the only love that is available for e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Love does not get any better than that which comes from God. God is love, and love was willing to sacrifice His own perfect Son Jesus that we would not drown in our own muck and filthiness. Don’t let another day pass you by without accepting and experiencing such a wonderful gift. Believe me, chocolate and $2 teddy bears are no contest…besides, this is eternal love.
But this is not a box of chocolates where you can pick the ones you want and just toss it aside when you have had your fill for the day. When you choose Jesus, God is to be first in your life (Exodus 20:3). And while it is your free choice to give Him whatever seat you choose, He will accept nothing less than the throne of your heart. If I could give any piece of advice from my, although fairly new and somewhat empty, archives, it would be to find your worth in Christ first. Before you consider any other love (especially romantic love), find your sufficiency in God.
This summer I was privileged to sing a beautiful song during a wedding that was no sappy couples’ song. Rather, it continued to focus the extremely special day for the couple on the main focus: God. The lyrics, though arranged by John Michael Talbot, is an almost exact rendering Psalm 62:1-2. The words are as follows:
Only in God is my soul at rest
In Him comes my salvation
He only is my rock
My strength and My salvation
Though the couple was expressing their love and commitment to each other, they were also acknowledging that God is still the one inhabiting the throne. (I would suggest reading all of Psalm 62, as it is a great encouragement and declaration of who God is to His children!) Until we allow all that we are to rest in Jesus, we will never find true rest. His love, a love that is unfailing, offers us that place of safety and comfort.
I want to draw your attention back to the song by Brooke Fraser. She sings “Some urge me to be temperate, lukewarm will never do/Cause I, I wanna blaze with you/So I’m holding my heart out to you.” There can be a tendency to receive God’s love and just move on with life. If you have ever stood in front of embers, you know that the heat they produce is not much compared to a blazing fire. But, the singer wants more than cooling embers. She wants a blazing fire, one that burns brightly. However, she does not just wait for it to occur, rather she acts upon her desire. She holds her heart out to God.
Maybe where there was once a fire in your heart, there are now only burning embers. I encourage you, and I urge you, hold out your heart to Jesus. Ask Him to stir up the fire in you, to set you ablaze. There could be no better place to look to for love than Love Himself.
Be encouraged,
Nichole
February 25th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Another good one! God is love. I couldn’t agree more!
I was actually thinking that day how silly it is that a day has been designated for love, because if we love truly then every day should be an opportunity to show it instead of it all being hinged on one. The Love Dare book also talks about how we can perform actions to “prove” our love but if we have not Christ in our hearts then we cannot possibly have agape for one another. Again taking me back to the reality that His is THE only perfect love.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Wonderful article!!!
February 25th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
You said it perfectly. We have all seen love come and go, but it is reasurring to know that God’s love it perfect and forever - even when we waver.
It is time to turn from the worlds view of love and focus on the creator of love. Any other love is merely an immitation. And though we should strive to immitate it we can never and should never replace it.
Great job Nichole. It’s wonderful watching God use your words in such a powerful way.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Nice! I couldn’t have said it better. Maybe you are the writer in the family. I didn’t know you had it in you. I suspected but I didn’t know. I love the part about finding your worth in Christ. I worry about sufficiently instilling that concept into my children, especially my daughter. I want so much to show them all of the things I have learned, yet I know that most of them, they will have to experience on their own. That’s the only way they can appreciate them. I found so much hope in Christ during the times I felt most alone.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Hold my heart out to Jesus? Okay then.
I guess that believing that “God is love” is a crucial step that I’m struggling with. I mean heck, I looked again recently at the story of Noah and far from it being this fun story with songs like “The animal went in two by two” and all the other nice things I associate with learning that story as a kid, it’s actually a horrific tale of a seemingly hateful God who thought nothing of wiping out everyone on the face of the planet apart from Noah and his little clan.
I can kind of believe God is love, but not in the ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ way, but instead in a more accepting and diverse way.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Wonderful article Nichole…takes us where we ought to be, basking in the glowing light of God’s love, and becoming a blazing fire of love to signal right back!
March 5th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Simon -
As Steve Jobs has said, people can’t connect the dots looking forward. He was speaking in a different context , but in the spiritual realm it’s quite appropriate. If we were living in the days of Noah and we were faced with a choice of letting humanity live or wiping it out, we would have no idea what the consequences of our actions would be. God did.
Think of it like Hiroshima at the end of WWII. Some say that there would have been hundreds of thousands of casualties had we not dropped the bomb, and others say that Japan was weeks away from surrender. Did the US make the right call? We’ll never know, because we can’t see into the future. But because God is eternal, He sees past and future in the present, and knows the result of every choice.
Stories like Noah can be tough to swallow, but it is consistent with 1) a just God who punishes sin, and 2) an omniscient God who knows the consequences of every action.
As for your second statement…you’ll have to explain that one a bit more!
Thanks for coming to the site - it’s good to hear other perspectives!
Brendan
March 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Simon,
Thank you for your post and I apologize for taking so long to respond to it. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you wrote.
One of the reasons I know God is love is that the Bible explicity states it:
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” 1 John 4:8
But, I thank you for your willingness to explore your question because it is important to “prove all things and hold fast to that which is true” 1 Thessalonians 5:21. It is wise to look deeper into issues that seem unreconciliable or things that seem hard to accept just at face value.
God is love, but He is also holy and in his holiness he cannot bear the sight of sin. Romans 6:23 says “the wages of sin is death” and Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have all sinned, so we all deserve to die. We 100% deserve it.
But let’s take a look at the state of humanity in Noah’s time
Genesis 6:5-9
“5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
7So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
8But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
9These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.”
Noah was blameless in his generation, a time when God saw the hearts of men and in their hearts was “only evil continually.” Keep in mind this is before Christ died for our sins, meaning that God’s people were under His law. No one else was living a life anywhere near to what God required, except Noah. Their very hearts were evil…and as it says God was sorry he had even created man. But God was still love then and he still loved humanity, his creation, but he wanted to start over–to create a people capable of loving Him and being who He created them to be. I don’t think I can know exactly why, but God must have known that the people of that time were not going to be who He created them to be.
Every person wiped out in the flood received what he/she deserved as a consequence of his/her sin–but God promised after the flood not to wipe out the earth like that again. God’s wrath and anger against sin is not evil, it is not bad. It is the necessary response to sin. We deserve the same as those who died in the flood, but God promised not to act in that way again. We are beyond blessed to be in a time that we can avoid God’s wrath through receiving the gift of salvation that Jesus offers…and receiving salvation is the only way to avoid the wrath of God that will one day be poured out on all who deny him. It is because He is love that he hates sin and must punish it. BUT it is also because He is love that he has MADE A WAY!!! A way for every single person to avoid the wrath he poured out in Noah’s time, the wrath we deserve, and to be adopted into His family.
It is definitely hard to deal with stories like Noah and others in the OT, but it is also humbling to realize that we all deserve the same. How awesome is it that God offers us salvation and we need only accept that salvation in order to have our infamothomable debt paid and to enter into the most loving relationship possible–ever.
I really hope this response is at least somewhat helpful or brings some clarity. I certainly do not have all the answers, but I would encourage you to continue seeking the answer to your question and to do so through studying the Word of God.
Again, thank you for your post and for looking for the truth!
Keep seeking Him:)
Nichole
March 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Dear Friends,
Thank you all so much for your comments!!! They are both encouraging and challenging, and I really appreciate them all.
Love in Christ,
Nichole
March 7th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Okay, sorry I didn’t sub to the comments so I missed those response to me. I’ll address them now.
I have a pretty good knowledge of the Bible for a non-churchy person. I know that the old testament was before Jesus and all that jazz, but I’m not sure that I can explain it away as simple as that. I guess in effect, I am struggling even dealing with the fundamentals of the idea that we needed some dude to come on down from heaven and die for us. Forgive me for saying this, but that just doesn’t make any sense to me any more and while I don’t reject that, I simply don’t get it.
I believe in God. Where I am sketchy is the whole Jesus thing. On my blog I recently asked a question ‘How do you hear from God.’ I was hoping to hear from different people but the question drew barely any response until a young Christian guy decided to start bashing people over the head with his Bible and saying how all other religions needed to be “rejected.”
It’s that kind of attitude that led me to think, “What are they so scared about?” God I can believe in, that’s not at all difficult. The infinite creativity of God is astounding, but I find it strange that a God so absolutely limitless in his creation would choose to then go against his own standards and pick this one singular route for all humanity by which to find him - knowing that the majority of people in the world would never find that way. From my perspective that absolutely flies in the face of a God who can on one hand create the stars, and on another can individually craft a snowflake.
If God is love, then his choice of religion was a bizarre and, more often than not, obscene way to demonstrate that to mankind.
I’ve decided to try and explore the idea of God, and the truth about him, by writing my new blog at whothehellisgod.com, but it’s proving to be a difficult task. The old testament is confounding to me and sometimes just outright offensive. I’ve quit reading it at the moment because rather than bringing me closer to God it’s just making me more convinced that God himself may well have had little to do with all the destruction that is done in his name. If anything, the old testament is making me want to become some hemp wearing guitar playing tree hugger living in a commune in Oregon!
Maybe I just don’t ‘understand it.’ I’m willing to concede that might be the case. But the problem with that is that it then leaves me open to listening to someone else’s interpretation, and really, what makes that person any better qualified? I can’t help feel that at that point you open yourself to abusive influences like those who tell young Muslim men that Jihad is the word for holy war.
Finding a God of love among the hateful masses is a task I think I have hugely underestimated.
I’m going to continue and you’re more than welcome to throw in your input via my blog from time to time too if you like (shameless plug!), and likewise I hope you won’t mind if I come here and throw in a question of two now and then.
Thanks!
Simon