Growing up, I rarely heard the words ‘I love you’. Might have been the nature of my family or the larger African context I grew up in. Saying ‘I love you’ wasn’t part of our vocabulary. However, I had no doubt that my parents loved my siblings and I. I knew they did because of the things they did for us. They took us to the best schools, provided for all our needs, celebrated our birthdays, organised family trips and so much more. Even though they didn’t say it, their actions showed it.

Well, I didn’t realise how easily I started viewing God’s love the same way. I started associating God’s love only based on the things He does for me.

Until last year,

I had been praying over and over for a certain outcome. When I say praying, I mean I was begging, pleading, asking, screaming for God to answer my prayer. And He did. He told me No! And the No came with many months of sadness and hardship. The No came with a change of environment. The No came with a career change. The No came with changes in my relationships. It felt like my world shattered. Life as I knew it completely changed.

All over sudden I started questioning God’s love for me. If God loved me, why would He allow me to go through this much pain and hardship? How was He present in my life and yet not fixing the situation?

During that time, God started speaking to me about the story of Lazarus in John 11. If you’ve read this story before, then you know how it ends. Lazarus is raised back to life. But there is a lot more to the story. When Jesus heard that His friend Lazarus was sick, Jesus chose to stay where He was 2 more days. I read that and it hit me in the face. I thought Jesus would leave everything He was doing and run to see His friend. How could Jesus love Lazarus but decide to delay? I’m not the only one who had this thought. Martha, Lazarus’ brother said this to Jesus:

“…..if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:21 NIV

Like Martha, I have often carried some resentment when God didn’t show up when/how I hoped He would. Somehow in my mind, I have struggled to see how a good loving Father would see me go through hardships and not immediately swoop in and get me out of them. I have struggled to accept God’s love when His will is contrary to what I prayed for. When He answers my prayers opposite of what I wanted. While God has now changed my situation and I am now rejoicing in God’s Yes, I would be lying if I said the No didn’t affect me. Because of that experience, there are times when I have prayed and as soon I finish, I’ve wondered if God is really going to answer my prayer. It’s not because I don’t have faith in His ability, it’s because I wonder if my prayers align with His will. It’s not that I believe God cannot do it. It’s that I question whether He will.

I recently read these verses and I realised I really have a skewed view of God’s love:

“so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV

Wide? Long? High? Deep? Those are not the words I would easily use to describe how I view God’s love for me. 1 John 4:8 says that God is Love. This means that everything He does is from love because that is who He is. God’s love is unconditional. So it means that even the hard seasons He allows is because of His love. Now it is up to me, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to choose to shift my perspective and accept God’s expression of love in the situation I am currently in.

This is not one of those posts where I can give you 3 clear steps of how to trust God’s love. This is a post where I admit that I still don’t have all the answers and I welcome you to share your own experiences on how you’ve learnt to trust God’s love.

When I was in highschool, I hated math. Sometimes during an exam, I would look at the answer sheet of the person in front of me or beside me and copy the answer they had. The problem is, I had no idea how they got to the answer and if you know anything about math, you don’t just get marks for the answer but for applying the formula to get to the answer.

In this question about love, I already know the answer – God is love. It is His love that compelled Him to send His one and only son Jesus to die for us. Now it’s up to me to apply the formula (the Bible) to every situation in my life to work out how to get to this answer.

• How does God’s love apply to me when I have just received my 20th job application rejection?
• How does God’s love show up when I am grieving the loss of a loved one?
• How does God’s love meet me when I keep falling into that sinful habit?
• How does God’s love support me when I feel like giving up?

Now read Ephesians 3:19 again – to know this love that surpasses knowledge. God’s love is greater than what our minds can conceive it to be. Even if we lived for 150 years, God’s love will forever surpass our knowledge. So instead of trying to confine His love to our limited understanding, maybe we should make it our lifelong goal to invite Him to show us His love in the way only He knows how to. That is how we get to the point where we can grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is.

Prayer

Dear Lord, thank you for your love for me. I admit that sometimes it’s hard to accept it because I have an idea of what it should look like. In the times where it’s hard to accept your love, please remind me of the sacrifice that Jesus paid on the cross for me, and how that was the greatest expression of your love for me. Help me to bring you my doubts and my fears and to allow you to change my view of your love for me. I know that I can’t love others well if I don’t know what your love feels like so I pray that you help me to accept your love, in whatever expression you choose to show it to me. In Jesus Name, Amen.