to know love

So most of the weeks here have just been filled with what I'm going to call therapy for lack of a better term, group therapy. Honestly, it's just us getting rid of shame, pain, unforgiveness etc. that we don't even know is there. It's surprisingly been amazing and I'm definitely not one for therapy sessions.

This week we split up and had guy and girls separate for a few days. On the first day of the guys gathering we heard about forgetting our first love. The speaker spoke on Revelation 2 and the church of Ephesus getting rebuked for forgetting their first love. Their works however, they were praised for, but they had lost love. He tied this into a message I've been hearing from God this whole time too, that God loves us, and that's why we love. That's how we love, that's how sustain a life in relationship with God, by remembering he loved us first.

It's our everything and yet most of the time we just focus on how much God hates things. "I messed up so bad, there's no way God can love me anymore." "If God really loved ------- they wouldn't have died." "If God loves us then why does he send people to hell?" I think everyone of us has heard or said something similar to those sentences. So why do we let our focus stay there and not on how much he loves us. Like the song "how he loves us" says:

When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory. And I realize just how beautiful You are, And how great Your affections are for me. And, oh, how He loves us, oh. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us, oh.

I had an insane moment earlier this month while this song was being sung. It doesn't quite fit in so I wont share, but ask me and I'll tell you all about it. But just think about your daily life and ponder how different your daily routine would be if you KNEW Jesus loved you? Not "yeah, God loves me, for the bible tells me so", but "I KNOW God loves me!!!". Have you ever been loved by someone? You do things differently for them when you know they love you. But the main one is it's just easier to love somebody when you know they love you. That's why we value trust so much, because once it's been broken it's so hard to know if that person really loves you, because if they loved you they wouldn't lie to you or whatever else they did to break your trust.

So why is it so hard for us to believe this? There's so much hurt and pain in this world, and many of us have terrible things done to us, or we have done things that make us feel unlovable. One of my biggest revelations so far during my DTS came week one. We had an alter call, one of those "if you were never really saved" kind of calls, and I was thinking to myself "do I need to go down?" I mean I had just had some intense moments with God, I really felt like I had just spent time in his presence, but I still was wondering if I was REALLY saved, maybe you've been there. Then, I just heard God tell me: "You aren't questioning your salvation. You're questioning the extent of my forgiveness, you're questioning the extent of my love!" I just broke down. I was wrecked.

Surprise, he was right! Satan comes to lie, steal, and destroy, and he's really good at it. He has lots of practice. I was refusing to believe that God really had forgiven me for things I had done. I thought there's no way God still loves me after I've said no to him for so many years. But he does!! And love changes everything.

Week 1 I was introduced to term I had never heard of, "joyful repentance". Each week since then it's made a little more sense. Think about this, do you know somebody who can't take criticism? You could literally tell them all day how beautiful and amazing they are and then say "hey, maybe wait until you're done chewing to talk". They just lose it, they don't remember any of the good stuff you said. They freak out, "YOU HATE ME!!!" You know, just totally irrationally reactions, you love them, you told them how much you loved them all day and when you told them one piece of criticism they lose it. The irony is that you only told them because you like them, you want to see what's best for them, you care. This is our relationship with God. When he convicts us for sin, when he tells us we can't do something that we want to do, when he tries to guide us, we just hear hate. Conviction is a gift!! It leads us to repentance which restores our relationship with God. That's where the term "joyful repentance" comes from. We should rejoice when we hear God's conviction because it leads to growth. God's waiting on us where we are, that sin you don't want to repent from is keeping you from going any further towards him. But once we repent it's done, it's over, he's like "ok great, lets keep going forward now".

To the degree that we love him is the degree that we surrender to him.

Think of it this way, when you go to a wedding and you see the groom standing at the alter, a tear falling down his cheek as his bride walks down the isle, you see his love to her. We see the wedding vows as sacred, that man was saying "yes" to his bride, one woman, and "No" to every other woman in the world. But if at the ceremony you see him kissing some other woman you're disgusted, probably to the extent of anger. The power of your "yes" is only as powerful as your "no", and yet look at our relationship with God. We say yes to God but we don't say no to everything else. It's easier to justify if you think God doesn't really love you. If we can believe a lie about how God turned his back on us first it's not really a big deal to deny him and walk away.

Once you truly believe that God loves you, that he values you, it's easy to stay on fire for him. To stay zealous, to be bold, to listen to that little voice that's telling you to do the right thing. We learn from God's love as well. When we understand how much God loves us, how his forgiveness is never ending, when we actually believe it, that's when other people start noticing. That's when you can start to love your enemies like yourself. Authentic Christianity comes out of the understanding of his love for us.

I feel like I could keep going, but it's late, I'm tired, and I think it would just be redundant. Just so you know a lot of this was taken from my notes from Andy Bird, I don't want anyone to think I was plagiarizing because I was just analogies and teachings of his.