>>>BY ALEX DOWNING
There is a special connection between love and faith. God’s love for us began long before we loved Him. “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…” (Ephesians 2:4-5, NIV). In the moments when we feel unloved, or when our faith is stretched thin, our joy often seems to disappear, despite the fact that we are made alive in Christ.
Sometimes there seems to be no easy way to get that joy back and no logical reason to be unhappy. We can try and try in our own effort to make ourselves feel something different, but it will be just that and nothing more – a feeling. But the Lord longs to give us life to the full (John 10:10)! He does that by showing His love to us in many different ways. We need to take the time to listen and believe it is true.
A couple years ago I read a book called The True Vine by Andrew Murray and it radically changed the way I looked at my Christian life. Murray was a pastor in South Africa and a vintner, a farmer who grew grapes, and has an uncanny way of explaining Scripture. The book goes through the parable of John 15, the vine and the branches, and its main theme is to abide in Christ.
Throughout The True Vine, Murray emphasizes that the branch life is a life of whole dependence on Christ. Murray wrote, “As surely, as naturally, as the branch abides in the vine, you can abide in Christ” (p. 73). There is a security in depending on Christ for all our needs that we cannot get anywhere else.
The insecurities many of us deal with throughout our lives, no matter our background or our personal situations, often boil down to one thing: Are we good enough to be loved? We fear that because of our past or because of our inadequacies, we are unlovable. Maybe you’ve faced abandonment and the need for love is a need for someone who will promise not to leave. Maybe you’ve had several rocky relationships that left you feeling unworthy, or maybe you never received a healthy love from your parents. No matter what makes you yearn for love, the fact of the matter is we all need to be loved.
Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” (John 15:9, NIV). God has wired us to give love and receive love. While romantic love and all of our human relationships were given to us by God, ultimately He is the only One who can fulfill that need. When we feel loved by God, we can have that inexpressible joy of being accepted and worthy, even alive when we felt dead before. In this way, a big part of a joyful life is accepting God’s love for us.
Many times in my own life I have felt ridiculous and unlovable, either because of my own sinfulness and selfishness or because of something others had done to hurt me. Our joy cannot be restored simply by happy feelings – what we need is to realize that God’s love for us is without condition and without barriers. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39, NIV). Truly, God’s love expressed to us in Christ never fails! God is love itself (1 John 4:8)!
For many of us, dwelling on God’s love is nice, but it is extremely abstract. Spiritual and emotional experiences speak volumes to us as humans, and truly do change our hearts and our perspectives. Yet, we also need to remember that God shows Himself to us and expresses His love to us in more ways than simply spiritual experiences and the truth of His Word.
God reveals His love to us in our relationships. Perhaps one of the most clearly marked and beautiful ways that we see a reflection of God’s love for us is in the marriage of a man and a woman. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that marriage is a depiction for us of Christ and the Church, and His sacrificial love for her. This is what truly makes Christian marriage so powerful, and why we yearn for romantic love. Our marriages, our friendships, and our relationships with family members and children can all be avenues through which God communicates His love to us. He blesses us with His love by blessing us with others’ love. In this way, I believe that an element of our joy is receiving love from others. Once we believe that nothing we do can separate us from the love of God, we must also let those close to us love us.
One evening, my fiancé and I went to an event together and I was feeling strangely. A lot of tension had arisen from finishing the school semester and from planning the wedding, and I was a little emotional. He asked me what was wrong and I replied that I felt weird and I didn’t know why. I explained that it wasn’t really a big deal, so I’d rather not waste his time. I began to cry, and he held me close. He had a lengthy paper due by midnight that night, which he hadn’t so much as started. We both knew that at 10 p.m. there was no way he was going to finish. But instead of agreeing that talking with me would be a waste of time, he sat with me and talked and let me cry.
“You don’t have to earn everything,” he told me. “You don’t have to earn my love. I love you just because you’re you.” That echoed in my soul as though the Lord Himself had said it to me. I realized that in the same way I pushed my fiancé away and thought my problems weren’t worth his time and attention, I was trying to earn the love of God and thought that my problems weren’t worth His time and attention. And yet, the work of Christ on the cross has already showed me that God loves me with a relentless and unconditional love, and nothing I do or don’t do can change that.
We must always remember the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross – the ultimate act of love for us. This causes us to remember our sin and how undeserving we are – but its ultimate product in our lives should be praise to God! We were unworthy and now we are redeemed (Romans 5:8-10)! We were lost and now we are found (Luke 15)! We were subject to death and now we are alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5)! Praise God for His good, pleasing, and perfect will that was accomplished on the cross, “in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7, NIV).
Christ has called us to Himself. There is always a reason to keep on loving and to keep on living. You don’t need to go find your joy or recreate your joyful feelings. Rather, spend a moment in quiet to reflect on what Christ has done for you, the extraordinary display of love on the cross, and the many blessings God has given you, His child. Like a branch receiving all its strength from the vine, receive your strength and your love from the True Vine, Truth, and Love itself.
