lifeasmission

Freeing Love from the Shackles of Fear

November 29, 2005

Does love freak you out? If it doesn’t, I say you’re missing something.

A few years ago I preached a message on love. Lately, God has been using some of the words He gave me back then to (re)illuminate my faith. In one of those moments when it just feels like the Holy Spirit has completely taken over, I remember myself saying something I had never though before and I know I hadn’t planned on saying (I know because I went back and checked). Towards the end of the message I kept saying, “Just love. If you love you win. If you succeed in loving, you will never have ever truly failed at anything.”

But I often fail to love. Why? Because I am afraid. When it comes right down to it I don’t want to love unless I know that it is going to be reciprocated. Loving makes us vulnerable, weak and subject to hurt and pain. No one wants that, so we restrict love to small doses and even then, usually only when we are fairly certain that the love will be accepted and probably returned.

I don’t think this is the vision God has in mind for us. I know it’s not the mindset He operates out of – “…for while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” I think God envisions a people so secure in Him, and in who they are in Him, that they can risk everything to love. They will make themselves vulnerable and subject to pain over and over if it means they get to love others.

But to love like this is unhuman, it’s simply not natural, right? Precisely! To live like this is way more than human, it is supernatural – enter God. We cannot do this on our own; we will not do this on our own. We need God, not just His example, but His power and grace to enable us to live the kinds of lives in which we love with reckless abandon. This does not make us above pain, despair, ot frustration. In fact, it makes us far more prone to it. Let’s face it, the more you love, the more you will get hurt – to love without taking some kind of chance is scarcely love at all. But God is with us in the midst of it. Imagine the strength God would give to His people, His Church, if they were so freaked out because of what His love for them meant and really understood how mindblowing He expected their love of others to be! It would be beyond anything this world has ever seen.

Last Thought: Christians live as part of a story, the center of which just happens to be the personification of Love Himself, dying a death of torture and shame, all because His hope was in something beyond. “For the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross scorning its shame…”

My prayer is that I, and the rest of those who choose to identify themselves with this act of unparalleled significance and beauty, would, in the midst of real fear, have the kind of hope and faith that compels us to love with reckless abandon.

Posted in: Jesus, church, love, theology