My Little Black Heart

My inability to love others perfectly affects my ability to believe God’s perfect love for me.

There, I said it.  I am capable of love, but it is critically flawed.  I love my wife, but there are times when we disagree.  I love my kids, but there are times when I lose my patience.  I love my family, but there are times when we don’t see eye to eye.  I love my friends, but there are times when they annoy me.

My ability to love has matured tremendously, but I’d like to travel back in time for a moment.

Love is a funny emotion.  Remember using this term when you were a kid?  At sixteen years old, I used the word "love" because it was the strongest term available for showing the utmost admiration for another person.  It typically fell on a girl who may, or may not have had the same feeling for me.  I shared that word because I was appreciative that a human being, of the female type, actually took time out of her busy schedule to talk to me on the cordless phone and hang out with me on campus. 

Later in my teen years, and into my twenties, the term "love" came into play when the touch of another person sparked emotions I had never felt before.  "Love" was used as a level within the relationship to completely define our status as a couple.  17-31707-1. Pager lingo for some of you younger folks.  We "loved" each other deeply, until one or the other completely screwed up and the relationship was over.  "Love" went out the window pretty quickly.

I have built quite an impressive resume with this emotion since those early days.  I have used love to temporarily destroy the life of another human being.  I have wreaked havoc on others who came to love me.  I claimed the love of another and discovered the evil that resided within.  As a result, I concluded that the word I had used all my life had no true meaning. 

Numerous conversations and several solid mentors later, I am on the road to recovery.  I found that I had to come to terms with my inability to live up to Biblical moral law.  Part of my struggle had to do with seeking forgiveness for my terrible misuse of such an important emotion.  I felt that there was no way in the world God could love me after all of the terrible things I had done to others.  I felt that my own definition of "love" was irreparable and beyond salvageable.  Additionally, my upbringing led me to believe that God was unapproachable.  He was the CEO with an office on the top floor of the Sears building who only had time for meetings with people who were perfect and blameless.  Why would he come down to the lobby for a slob like me?

Romans 8 v. 37-39 says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Additionally, Romans 3 v. 20-24 says ,“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

I cannot comprehend God’s love because God’s love is completely antithetical to human standards.  God’s love is perfect, unconditional by grace, and preserved through times of despair, angst and toil.  It is the type that no other human being is able to provide.  It is the kind worth fighting, and dying for.

I have a family now.  A beautiful, loving wife, and two beautiful little girls.  These three human beings, along with the realization of Christ’s’ love for me, have strengthened the way I am able to love ten fold.  My old way of thinking has no place within my new little world.

I have a responsibility to love my family, and others, effectively and without pause.  Just the way Christ loves me.  I will continue to lay it down until my last breath leaves.