A student emailed me this week to see how I was doing and to get my input on a song she is thinking about in reference to graduation. The song, “Happiest Year” by Jaymes Young speaks of the desire to go back in time to rekindle a relationship that’s ended. Perhaps you have heard of it. I’ve thought a lot about relationships this week because I have been quarantined due to illness. People have a lot of time to reflect on what’s important when they are alone. What has made this contemplation even more heartfelt is that an extended family member of mine and a family friend both died this week from health issues. Life is made of relationships–first with God, the source of abundant life, then with others. I pray that you would make God your first love and people your second (Matthew 22:36-40). Not for what you can get from them, but merely because they are so important and special. Then let everything else fall in line behind that.
Loving God and loving others unconditionally, sacrificially might seem foreign to you, frightening, or even impossible. It doesn’t have to be if you love with God’s love and not your own. In fact, God never asks you to do something he doesn’t enable you to do. We are able to love because God first loved us. He is love (1 John 4:7-21). As we receive his love and share it back with him, it overflows in love to others. That’s what Jesus, God the Son, modeled so beautifully when he became a man on earth. He continually spent time with God. Jesus’ actions and words consistently declared, “I love to be with you, Father.” Here are a few of his statements:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19)
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).
“And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8:29).
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).
“For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49).
“But I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31).
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30).
Out of Jesus’ incredible love for God the Father, comes an overflowing love for us. He wants to be with us and for us to be with him. His very name, Immanuel, means “God with us.” It was the purpose behind his every healing, the point of every teaching, the reason for every blessing, the heart behind his calling. On the cross, as he hung in agony and became sin for us, Jesus in essence was crying out, “I love to be with you and here I give my life to make it so you can love to be with me.” The book of Romans reiterates this truth, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8).
Fortunately Jesus did not remain in the grave. God raised him to life again. God will do that for anyone who is dead in their sins now, but wants to rise to new life by trusting and obeying Jesus. So given Jesus’ glorious example, I have two challenges for you.
First, love to be with God. Confess any self-centeredness and wrongdoing. Receive his forgiveness. Then make him your dearest friend. Walk with him, talk with him. Study his word. Confide in him. Rely on him. Trust and obey him. Find your greatest pleasure in pleasing him. Then with your words and your actions show how great he is in your life, so others will love to be with him also.
Second, love to be with people. Be an example of God’s love to others. Let his love overflow through you. Initiate, sacrifice, forgive, extend grace and mercy, put other people’s interests first. Invest in them. But don’t just put in what you are going to get out of it, put in for what they will get out of it. Love gives. It joyfully seeks to do more than required or expected. Treat others the way you want to be treated (Matthew 7:12).
Imagine what this world could be like if everyone loved God and shared his love with others. On a smaller scale imagine what your world could be like. Eventually this will come true after Jesus returns to earth to reward believers, judge unbelievers, and vanquish evil. But even now it can begin. Jesus prayed to God the Father that it would for anyone who follows him, “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:21-23). I hope you choose to say, “I love to be with you, God.” For that is where life is found, adventure embarks, and every other relationship finds its fulfillment. With the days you’ve been given, discover all God has for you at one with him in Jesus.