Live to Love.

I just have to write this down...

Sunday School was sooooo good.
I never thought it could be so deep, emotional, intellectual, yet theological at the same time.

The idea that struck me most was when we defined God's love for us.
We can define it with this one word....and no, it's not "unconditional."
We can define God's love as unrequited.

If you don't know what unrequited means, it's synonymous with unreciprocated.
God loves us so much....that he can experience pain from it.

I've been in love with two guys in my life. When they fell away from God it was the most painful, heart-wrenching time of my life. I felt so much pain. My heart literally hurt, all day long. It just disgusted me. How could someone turn away from the living God? The very thing that gives us breath and that even allows us to live in the first place.

Love...can sometimes be painful, but that's when you know it's true....because God experiences it too.

God must feel pain when he loves us unconditionally and unrequited.  He must. I've been there and I've felt that inseparable love, but God feels it for all humanity. His heart must be broken when we reject him, when we sin, when we misuse His name, when we fail to love others.....God hurts.

When I think of Jesus I think of the most gentle touch...
When you're sick the very touch of Jesus could heal you.
When your heart's broken the very love of Jesus can consume you so powerfully it nearly knocks you over.
The Holy Spirit can so deeply transcend your body and make you feel tingly shivers.
It just amazes me....that God loved us enough to take on the sins of the world.

The message today in church only confirmed the Sunday school lesson.

We hear the message of the cross over and over again, but that doesn't make it any less powerful.
In my opinion, we need to preach the cross more because everything else we say should always relate back to that. Jesus died on the cross for you and for me.

My class was asked the question, "Why did Jesus have to die?"  The reality is that we've fallen from God and live in a corrupt and depraved world.  Our very human nature is sinful and corrupt. To be saved we had to have an equivalent without blemish: Jesus.

"He knew no sin, but suffered as if he did."

Jesus' death on the cross should have been us. Each and every one of us.
It's no wonder that in the garden of Gethsemane before he was to be crucified he wondered if there was any other way.....any other way to do this besides death on the cross. The most shameful death a Jew could die. Humiliation, and being spit on.. yet, we continue to sin in our daily lives. That's the very same as continually spitting on Jesus. It's telling him that his death and resurrection meant nothing to us. But because of our humanity, depravity, and corruption  we continue to do sin. In fact, it's impossible not to sin, but when we do we should know that God HATES sin.  In fact, sin is the only think listed in the Bible that God hates.

Back to love..
If you've ever been in a place where love was painful, imagine that, but imagine it for all of humanity. Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane and was sweating blood. BLOOD. I don't know about you, but I've never sweat blood, ever. It was such a heavy burden...and the message of the cross is just as heavy to me today.

There's a better way. There's a better way than the way you're doing things now. There's a greater love than anything we as humans could ever feel. There's a better path in life to take than the one we have in mind for ourselves.

We are just humans... we're so limited in the things we can do.  We cannot bring healing to ourselves, granted, we can treat wounds but we can't bring ultimate healing to our souls.  We cannot bring ultimate restoration, and we cannot make ourselves new creations. There's been so many times when I just think, "I wish I could just start completely over." I can try... I could change my name, change the way I look, change where I live and what car I drive, but deep down I would still be the same person. But why would I waste my time trying to do all that stuff when I can just look to God and say, "Make me new." and start a complete life transformation from that very moment on?

I'm just rambling now... but I just love the idea of love. I love the idea of loving other people. I wish I could be in love with every human the way Jesus is, but I'm not God and I could not handle that sort of pain.. It hurts when someone does not love you back. The emotional pain is just gripping, and your heart aches with every throb, but I want to live to love.