A love that would bless someone with a loving family, food to eat, a place to live, a good job, and healing from sickness. This kind of love I can understand. A love that would allow us to go through a few difficulties so that we can grow, that love I can understand. I could even somewhat understand a love that would let Lazarus die and then bring him back from the dead a few days later to grow the faith of those around him and bring glory to God.
But a love that lets kids die of starvation, a love that allows a drunk driver to kill someone just walking on the sidewalk, that kind of love I cannot understand. The kind of love that would allow a person to feel so lonely that they feel the need to end their life. To end the pain in their heart. Why God would allow us to feel so much heartache that we find in our mind no other option but to end our life?
A love that would allow a 20-year-old to shoot and kill his mother then drive to an elementary school and kill 26 more children and adults. That love I cannot understand.
I cannot understand a love that would allow 8-year-olds to be abused and sold into the sex trafficking industry. A love that would allow them to be dehumanized, and degraded, and their hearts be filled with shame no one should know.
I probably won’t ever understand it this side of heaven, but here is what I do know…
Trusting God’s Character When We Don’t Understand
God’s love, real love, is beyond comprehension. He tells us this and yet we as humans try to reason his love or say what it should be. I know that my God has been faithful my whole life. Through good times and bad. the joy and the sorrow. I know my God is a promise keeper, the only perfect, loving father filled with compassion and mercy. Even though I might not understand all his love, I know his character. He allows us to have a relationship with him so that we can grow closer to him. I know a God who speaks to us in our pain. I know a God who holds us in his arms while we are lying in our bed crying ourselves to sleep. I know a God who tells us he will never leave us, yet he doesn’t stop there. To have someone who is always with you but does nothing is not enough. So not only does he promise to be with us, but he promises to give us strength.
What I have found in life is that sometimes when we ask him for strength, he will bring more trials. It’s not us underestimating our strength, it’s us underestimating his. We think we have had enough and ask for him to give us “strength through this trial,” but then he allows another trial on top of that. This makes no sense to our human reasoning.
But at the same time he also promises,
“a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.” (Isaiah 42:3)
God’s Promises in Our Trials
Hold God to his promises. He wants you to. Dive into the Word of God headfirst, find his promises, then don’t let go.
– This I know; God is on my side (Psalm 56:9)
– We will never leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5)
– Each day he carries us in his arms (Psalm 68:19)
– No good thing will he uphold for those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11)
– He cares about every detail of your life (1 Peter 5:7)
“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19
Should we expect to understand a love that God told us is beyond understanding? How can I tell the one who is Love what love is?
God is infinite, we are finite.
So then be persistent in prayer, holding fast to his promises. Not on your timing, but his. Not on your understanding, but his. That’s the beauty of God. You can never stop growing closer to him, learning more about him, and building a stronger relationship with him.
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)
Maybe it’s a good thing that God’s love is beyond understanding because a love I could fully understand would never die for someone like me. A love I could understand would never take on the greatest loneliness of being separated from the Father so I didn’t have to experience that. The fact that the Love I can’t fully understand would pursue a relationship with me, that in itself is a miracle.
The Selfless Love of God
Don’t let your circumstances blind you to the love of God. There is a love that CAN be experienced here on this Earth, and it is greater than any other love. Far greater. It is possible not only to just know about this love but to experience it. I’ve experienced this love over and over again and over and over again it was the sweetest love. It was and is the Love that holds onto me when I can’t hold on any longer. The love that has caught every one of my tears. The love that rejoices with me. The love that weeps with me. It’s a love no words on a page could ever explain. It’s not a love you get when you do the “right” thing. It’s not the love you have to work for. The truest form of love is COMPLETELY Selfless. God is the only one who is completely selfless. This kind of love you can’t experience from another human being or material object. This kind of love, the love we don’t fully understand, is only from God. God is this Love.
If you want to know about God’s love, then read 1 Corinthians 13.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
This is just part of what God’s love is, and he is every one of these points perfectly. But if you just know about God’s love but haven’t experienced it, knowing won’t be enough. It requires an intimate relationship with God. Knowing a love but not experiencing it won’t be enough when this world throws everything it has all at once.
Love is not selfish, it’s selfless. A lot of us might say we love someone whether that be a family member, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, etc. but if you think about it, almost every “act of love” we do is selfish. We say, “I enjoy hanging out with you” or “I had fun.” A lot of the time we “love” people for how they make us feel. We give because it makes us feel better about ourselves. We even might use some of our spare time to serve someone. But that’s just it, spare time. Love is the opposite. Love isn’t about us at all.
God is perfect love. Nothing he does is selfish. Even when God says that he made us for HIS glory. Even that is not selfish, for when we give him the glory, we get the most pleasure. We live the life we were meant to live. How can we expect to fully understand God’s true love when we ourselves can barely love without being selfish?
Our human reasoning of what love should look like falls short of what love really is. Our brains don’t have the capacity to understand fully what real love is.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
The heavens are infinitely higher than the earth… His ways are infinitely higher than ours.
Clinging to Faith in a World Filled with Unanswered Questions
Sometimes more joy is brought to us through a time of misery than of no sorrows. God knows. He knows what is best. When questions arise, look to heaven. Don’t focus on Earth. His ways are higher than this Earth. Look to heaven.
Right now, could be down your street or your next store neighbor, a child is waking up every day to the beating hand of their father solely because they woke up. All the sound theology in the world can’t help our minds reason why this horrific event happened fully.
I could go on and talk about how this world is sin-cursed, and we don’t deserve anything. How people have the free will to act the way they want, and the reality is that people do awful things. That we think we deserve more than we do, but sometimes that reasoning doesn’t even touch the pain that those tears falling down the child’s face hold.
Let us get one thing clear. I’m NOT saying that is love. Don’t think for one second that I’m saying human trafficking and molesting is love. It’s not. God put it on our hearts that this is wrong. We don’t need to be told that it’s wrong to have a sense that it is. God is outraged for his children being molested and raped. Outraged. He is more outraged than anyone on this planet is about it because he loves that child more than anyone on this Earth does.
Therefore, “religion” in today’s terms doesn’t cut it. A one-way conversation with a god won’t cut it. A “maybe today he’ll hear me maybe tomorrow he won’t” god won’t cut it. How can I trust a god like that? It’s going to take an intimate relationship with the God of the universe to be able to cling to hope.
I’ve heard it said that “religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing. Relationship is a guy out fishing thinking about God.” The closer you grow to God, the more you will see his love and the easier it will be to trust him and have faith. I love this quote by John Piper. He says, “No matter what you face this year, God will be doing 10,000 things in your life that you cannot see.”
We don’t see what God sees, and we don’t have the capacity to understand all his love. So, live by faith and not by sight. Let Him be your eyes. Right now, trust him with what you don’t understand. In the end, everything will be made right.
“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” Romans 8:18
By Grace Alone,
Rebekah Elizabeth
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