“Loving What God Loves”: What We Love When We Love God (part 9)
Getting right to it: Last week we saw that what we love when we say we love God, must include ourselves. We ourselves and our lives exist within the things we love about God.
For example, when we consider the World God made, which we love Him for, we must recognize that we ourselves are “made things” within that world. Our made-selves are part of the made-world which we love God for. Or, when we praise God for the strange Ways He works in the world, we must admit that this includes our own often confusing life-stories. And then, when we sing about His many wondrous Works, we are also singing about what He has done for us—how God has worked in the world includes how He has worked in our lives.
And the point to all these things, again, is this: That we might learn how to love our neighbors well, by learning how to love ourselves properly, within our love for God.
How do we learn to love our neighbors well? By learning to love ourselves as we ought. And for that, for proper self-knowledge and self-love, we must by guided by our love for God into His love for us. His love is proper and true. His love is not cheap self-care hacks, or unhealthy self-absorption. His love is healing, hope-giving, good and right.
So let’s keep pressing into this idea.
Consider: How does God feel about these things about Himself that He invites us to love?
How does He feel about who and what He is—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? He loves this! How does He feel about the world? He loves the world! How does He feel about His Word, His Works, His Ways, His Will? You get the idea? He loves all these things!
These all reveals who He is, and so He loves them, for that is right. It is right and good to love what is most loveable, most worthy of love.
And what God loves, we ought also to love.
Now we have observed this fact, that we are included in what God loves. But also the Bible everywhere makes our situation quite clear: God loves you. God loves us.
What you are, He loves. What you’re like, He loves. Your life and story, He loves. God loves you.
God loves you, for you are His. His creation. His breath. His heart. The object of His attention, of His concern. The object of His self-sacrificial love. The object of His generosity. His delight, His plans, His purposes.
How can we love God, and not with God love what He loves?
To say to Him, What You love, O God, I do not find loveable, and I will not love—is to say to Him, I do not love this about You, O God. I do not love that You love me, as You made me, what I am, and my life.
God loves you. He loves the body He designed and created you with. Not an ideal body, but the one you have. He loves the mind He designed and created you with. Not some “better” mind, but the one you have. He loves the life-story He knows intimately and has walked with you through. Not some “really great” life story, but yours. He loves your personality, strengths and weaknesses, tendencies, perspective, loves and struggles and hopes and fears. He loves you.
Whatever “you” are, God loves.
Many of us have heard and sung the song, Just As I Am.
This was written by Charlotte Elliot for a hymnal she published called, “The Invalid’s Hymn Book.” In her early 30’s, she was struck with an unknown illness, and remained nearly bed-ridden and almost always in pain until she went home to Jesus at the age of 82.
Just As I Am is a beloved song because it says to the person who knows that they have nothing to contribute to God, God loves you anyway. Jesus came for you, just as you are.
Just As I Am speaks to something primal in us. For there is in every one of us things we dislike, are ashamed of, struggle with or against, things we resent, wish were different, and maybe even sometimes hate. We all have these things. Some of these, like Charlotte’s illness, are clearer. Others of these frustrations are ideas-about-ourselves we picked up from our parents or siblings, or from the culture, or from our own twisting pride and fear. Who knows. But we all have them.
But, just as we are, such as we are, whatever it is we are, God loves.
And until we know ourselves within the love of God, we will never love ourselves rightly.
And until we love (what we think of as) our weaknesses along with (what we think of as) our strengths, because God loves us “just as we are,” we’ll never know how to love our neighbor well either. Just as we love ourselves for our strengths, but despise ourselves for our weakness, so we do to our neighbor. This is neither right nor fair. Nonetheless, until we learn from God’s love, we’ll never know another way.
What we love, when we love God, is all that God loves. And that includes all that you are.
PRAYER
Lord God, “I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works—my soul knows it well.” So the psalmist sings. And the apostle Paul himself even says, "By the grace of God, I am what I am."
Lord, I confess that this just really stirs up some muck inside my spirit. I don't know how to feel about these ideas. I value in me what I've been taught to value, and I despise in me what I've been taught to despise. And this does not always align with Your Word, or take into account Your Grace.
And I'm not even sure what exactly to pray--I certainly don't feel like "praising You" when I make a "searching and fearless" review of myself and my life--but I can tell that the answer to whatever prayer Your Spirit would want to pray with me is undoubtedly contained in these verses: "May the LORD direct Your heart to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ," and "So we have come to know and to believe the love God has for us." (2Thes 3:5; 1Jo 4:16)
Okay. I guess so. That.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash