"I remember . . . the kindness of thy youth." Jeremiah 2:2 Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes. It is a great thing to think that Jesus Christ has need of me - "Give Me to drink." How much kindness have I shown Him this past week? Have I been kind to His reputation in my life? God is saying to His people - You are not in love with Me now, but I remember the time when you were - "I remember . . . the love of thine espousals." Am I as full of the extravagance of love to Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him? Does He find me recalling the time when I did not care for anything but Himself? Am I there now, or have I become wise over loving Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no account of where I go? or am I watching for the respect due to me; weighing how much service I ought to give? If, as I recall what God remembers about me, I find He is not what He used to be to me, let it produce shame and humiliation, because that shame will bring the godly sorrow that works repentance. (Oswald Ch) | ||
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4 days ago
6 comments:
Dear Ruth,
First time at length on your blog and it seems you theme is God's love towards humanity; in particular His love for those who receive Him.
Perhaps you are unaware of my recent blog post "Does He really love us?" Whether or not you are, I would be interested to hear how you would articulate your personal assurance of God's love for you. That is, How would you persuade a skeptic of God's love for that skeptic? What arguments would you use; do you use?
Hi there William,
On articulating God's love for me:
Yes, since I have come to realize God does love ME, so much has changed in my life. That is really what my blog has been about: how that has been worked into (STILL IS) and reflected in my life.
If you are interested, you could read through some of my previous posts which tell of my own struggle in coming to know His love for me.
This reality (that I am loved) becoming rooted in my heart, is now the place/centre of where and how I hope that I am living my life.
Before this became real to me, so many people put up with me (through the years) as i moved through said years feeling unloved, feeling uncertain of God's
love for me, feeling angry & very frustrated at what was actually being produced in my life, yet all the time trying so very hard and truly convinced that I was living the victorious Christian
life in exactly the way God wanted me to and the way I (above all others) understood that to be. Just remembering that now makes me cringe. I would never want to be that way again.
I played the make believe stage so very well, just within my own family. Of trying to be SO right about my theology, but so very
wrong in the way I actually lived that out. Yet I was convinced that I was doing God's will extremely & so perfectly. That was the saddest thing of all.
Of course at the time i did not know this or see this at all, which really and as I said - this
is the saddest thing about this whole attitude that I had. I am sure everyone else around me saw through it so easily but not me. thank God for God's love & mercy TO ME AND FOR ME - that despite this, He rescued me from this.
So once God's love penetrated the chambers of my own heart in all of that, it forever changed ME. I realized and learned very quickly that my role was not to argue and convince people of God's love for them, or to rule over them in some kind of forceful manipulative challenging way, but to TRULY learn the way of Christ in being loved & loving others: that was truly the answer. God doing the convincing just as he convinced me.
I am so thankful.
Ruth
How do you define this?:
"TRULY learn the way of Christ in being loved & loving others"
Surely, you have learned something since this big change in you. How would you describe His love? An attitude of heart He has toward you, actions He takes on your behalf? How?
HI William:
I am sorry that you feel that I did not sufficiently answer you William. If you have genuinely posed these questions to me, then as I suggested, reading my blog may perhaps help you to discover more of the as you have said Big Change (of His love in me).
I basically said the biggest evidence of God's love for me seems to be and continues to be, that he rescued me out of my own hurtful & manipulative ways. He rescued me from myself . To me that is and always will the biggest evidence that He loved me and continues to love me. His love in this way is changing me, changing my character, changing my attitudes, how I live out my life in this world among those who are closest to me (that is sometimes always the most difficult of all) The very basis of His character is that He is loving, very real & Truthful in every exchange with another human being, as we should be .... BUT HIS love is at the heart of who He is.
That is how I would describe His love. The attitude of heart that He has & had towards me was that He rescued me! Even tho I did not deserve to be rescued. And not only rescued me, but then loved me enough to begin to change me, change my heart, change my behaviours, change my attitudes. The goal of His love is to change me! That is so amazing! So we can be like Him.
In conclusion, if this still does not summarize my first answer above, or does not seem to somehow satisfy your question, I am sorry but that in itself is the answer I choose to give you.
I guess I would say that I am, thus far, a little skeptical of the enduring value of your experience. Not that your experience thus far is invalid. You were at a certain place in your Christian walk, and now you are at a new and better place. You wish to share with others about this better place.
However, I come from a place where I know for a fact that God can, and does, generate circumstances in our lives when His love is almost impossible to detect. I wonder how you would weather those circumstances, where you were utterly unable to detect the "attitude" of love you find so meaningful.
For certain, God demands of every true believer that they subsist largely on faith. He is unwilling to provide, and no one Christian genuinely receives, a constant flow of tangible evidence of God, including His "attitude" of affection for us. If He did provide that, we would no longer live by faith, but by sight.
I will continue to read your blog because I am interested in what you have learned thus far, but I do wonder if you'll still be writing when He cuts you off, as He will, from the regular assurances of His love that you seem to depend on.
It may be, that in all the above I have mischaracterized your experience, and if so, I am sorry. I am responding to what you have supplied so far. You wrote that you have given me your answer. Well, based on the totality of your answer, this is the totality of my response.
William,
I am not sure how you have really come to even know me or who I am or have any conclusions about me, so that you could have even thought to put yourself in a position of evaluating me or Christ in me.
But anyhow ,, it is my one hope that I am what I am, meaning Christ is Christ in me; and when I have been through and will yet go through difficult times , i pray that I will turn closer to Him, that I will not become bitter towards Father or others, but that the opposite will happen and continue to happen. That I will become so soft and compassionate hearted, that someone perhaps another person who is devastated or hurting in life, that i somehow would be a vessel for him .
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