{"id":2004,"date":"2017-02-17T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T16:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2017-02-17T09:19:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T16:19:27","slug":"god-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/?p=2004","title":{"rendered":"God is love?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/h1>\n

This past week some of my\u00a0colleagues and I were talking about God’s love. \u00a0How do we experience it? \u00a0How does it affect our daily living? \u00a0How can we help others experience it?<\/span><\/h1>\n

What we discovered was that intellectually understanding God is love\u00a0is one thing, but embracing his intimate love for us particularly is another thing entirely. \u00a0Most people don’t live with God’s intimate\u00a0embrace of love for us. \u00a0Instead, we settle for\u00a0the intellectual knowledge that\u00a0God loves us. \u00a0<\/span>However, settling for the knowledge of God’s love for us without experiencing it is like owning a\u00a0Ferrari without the keys. \u00a0It looks fast\u00a0in your garage, but you will never experience the thrill of driving it.\u00a0<\/span>That’s when it hit me… \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem of embracing God's love for us is our personal experience of evil. <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0context of God\u2019s love always comes to people who have been beat up. \u00a0None of us awakened to God\u2019s love in the context of only love. \u00a0We have experienced what our spiritual father and mother experienced in the garden when they took the forbidden fruit and ate it. \u00a0We experience the knowledge of evil. \u00a0Unfortunately, our suffering from this experience of evil is not equal. \u00a0Some have more, and others have less. \u00a0Yet, the reality is that we all have some experience of evil as the backdrop to the message: God is love.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how can spiritual leaders (both lay and clergy)\u00a0take the theological understanding\u00a0of God\u2019s love and apply it to our living and leading?<\/strong> \u00a0How do we reveal a God who is love to a world that either rejects that premise or pays lip service to it given the evil that they have experienced in life? \u00a0Given the context of our experience of evil, this is going to take some work on our end. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are\u00a0three things that help me understand God\u2019s love in the context of the evil I have faced. \u00a0Here’s the first:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. God Pursues:<\/strong> God is singularly focused on me entering a relationship with him for my benefit. \u00a0Over and over again, he reveals himself as the Grand Pursuer of those who are lost. \u00a0He stops at nothing to invite me\u00a0into a relationship with him, forgiving my failures and cleaning up my self-inflicted wounds. \u00a0Every book in the Bible reveals his never ending, unstoppable love for us. \u00a0God simply does not give up, and his purpose is not to get something out of me, but to put something into me – his love. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As leaders, we can help those blinded to God’s love for them because of their personal experience of evil by revealing God’s pursuit in the stories of the Bible. \u00a0It isn’t enough just to give people principles to live by. \u00a0We desperately need to go beyond the goal of understanding God in our teaching and move toward experiencing\u00a0God through our teaching. \u00a0We can begin to awaken people to experience God’s love for them by showing people how God passionately pursues them.<\/p>\n

When I see the relentless pursuit of God toward me in the Bible, I become open to the possibility of receiving his love for me. \u00a0When I see all the ways the barriers he has crossed, all the\u00a0hurdles he has jumped, all the obstacles he has removed, I begin to soften to the reality that God does indeed love me. \u00a0<\/span>God doesn’t pursue us with a “take it or leave it mentality.” \u00a0He isn’t so easily bruised by my sheepish nature or my wicked behavior. \u00a0He is a passionate lover with only one thing on his mind…to draw me close. \u00a0When we reveal God’s\u00a0passionate pursuit of us in\u00a0our teaching, the warmth of his love\u00a0begins to melt\u00a0the cold ice that has incased\u00a0our souls.<\/p>\n

So how are you helping people experience God’s love in the context of their experience of evil?<\/p>\n

I would love to hear how you are helping people experience God’s love. \u00a0Next week, I will share the second thing that helps me experience\u00a0God’s love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past week some of my\u00a0colleagues and I were talking about God’s love. \u00a0How do we experience it? \u00a0How does it affect our daily living? \u00a0How can we help others experience it? What we discovered was that intellectually understanding God is love\u00a0is one thing, but embracing his intimate love for us particularly is another thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.theawakenministry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/God-is-Love-Pt.-1.001.jpeg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}