1 John 4:8(NKJV) 8He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
This week I want to look more deeply into the nature of the love of God and how it affects us personally. Today’s scripture is another one that is very well known. It is also a phrase that has become a Christian cliché. To say God is love is acceptable even outside Christian circles. However, I wonder if we have any idea how important and far reaching a statement this is.
Some time ago, I got stuck on another scripture. Hebrews 11:6 makes the statement that anyone who comes to God must believe that God is. This seems obvious, but the significance of it weighed heavily on my mind. If God truly exists, with the implication that he is the God he says he is in the bible, everything in life changes. God’s existence makes impossible things possible. Any circumstance or trial takes on a completely different perspective if God exists. The thought is revolutionary if we really grasp it.
God is Love is another one of those phrases. Of course God is Love. Everyone knows that. However, what are the implications of this phrase? Let us consider them today.
When we read or hear “God is love”, what we understand the words to mean is “God loves.” That is our experience. However, God does not just love. He is love. I do not “human” I am human. Not only am I human, I am a human male. That is my nature. It affects everything I think and everything I do.
There was a time when the world and the media tried to tell us that the only difference between men and women was physical. However, in the last number of years science has discovered that men and women’s brains are different. Their perspectives are different. The way they see life is different. I am a male and my wife is a female. We could have told the would be experts that we were fundamentally different all along!
In the same way, God is love. Love is at the heart of everything he thinks and does. Everything that God has done, is doing or will do in your life is motivated by love. It is impossible for God to do anything that is not motivated by his love. All of God’s dealings with humanity, either on a corporate or personal level, are motivated by God’s love. Even when we cannot see how this could be possible, we must accept it as the absolute truth.
Many times things happen that we do not understand. Sometimes those things are a product of the attack of our enemy, Satan, and his forces. Sometimes bad things happen because of our own bad actions or decisions. However, everything that happens to you or to me that comes from the hand of God is motivated by his love. Sometimes that means difficult things. Sometimes it means hard things and things that we will not understand. If we know something comes from God, we must decide to see it as love working for our good.
That is part of the problem. God’s love is always motivation for the highest good in our lives. We often are not concerned with the highest good. We want a solution to the current problem. We want relief from the pain. This pain may be physical, emotional or spiritual, but we want it to stop hurting. God’s love is not based in emotion. God’s love is based in decision and he cannot accept anything less than the absolute best for us.
Since this is the case, God will not simply give us relief. He will look at the root of the problem and dig until he gets that root out of our lives. He will give us relief when we absolutely need it, but he will never stop there. He will always go on to complete victory, healing or deliverance. Sometimes that just does not fit with our agenda.
God is a God of fruitfulness. He wants us to bear fruit in every area of life. The problem is that fruit cannot grow in the midst of weeds. Look at Mark.
Mark 4:18-20(NKJV) 18Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, 19and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 20But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”
Here Jesus is speaking of the fruitfulness of the Word of God in the hearts of men. When the seed of the Word falls among thorns, it cannot produce because the thorns will steal the life from the seed of the Word. It is the same in all areas of life. God wants us to produce fruit, but we have too many weeds in the way.
Have you noticed how easy it is to grow weeds. I have many of them in my yard. I do not have to cultivate them. I do not have to water them. I do not have to do anything to them to get them to grow. All I have to do is nothing. They grow all by themselves. The problem is getting rid of them.
Fruitful things, such as flowers, take work to grow. I do not think that is a coincidence. I believe it is God’s way of showing us this truth. We tried to grow flowers next to our garage. Neither my wife nor I have any interest in gardening. She wanted some pretty flowers so we planted the seeds. Soon we had many plants in the flower patch. We had no idea which were flowers and which were weeds. It became clear very soon that the weeds had the upper hand.
If we wanted flowers, we were going to have to dig out the weeds. We were going to have to find out what the flowers looked like at various stages and we were going to have to watch over them until they were developed. To have weeds we just left the patch alone.
God’s love is always moving us toward being fruitful. He will never settle for anything less. He will keep weeding us, turning our soil and watering us until we begin to produce the fruit he knows we are capable of producing. That can be a difficult process for us, but we must remember God is working toward our highest good.
We need to take a little time this week to see what weeds we have growing in our lives. What fruit do we need to cultivate right now. It will take time to get the weeds out and the fruit growing, but God’s love is working with us. He wants the best for you and only the best. Yield to his wonderful love and see what God will do.
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