Perfect Love because I'm just not.

I’ve been on a significant spiritual high, seeing God do amazing things in crazy circumstances. This past week I prayed that God would never let my spiritual high end, that I would continue to experience His perfect joy. He has been faithful to deliver on that promise. As the week continued I began to measure things according to what I could handle in effort to not become completely antisocial. I am able to handle all television shows. I am able to handle a small amount of alcohol. I can handle spending time with a friend who doesn’t draw me closer to the Lord. I can handle it. I can handle all of it. And then I fell. Not in a huge way, no dramatic law broken, I simply disobeyed God’s command over my life. I denied His glory, that He was the one who gave me strength to handle anything. I began to test God instead of standing firm on His word and waiting for His guidance to move. I felt myself drawing away from the Lord and began to revel in my disobedience. I started recognizing the negativity and downhearted spirit within me. It was at church that I became painfully aware of how in less than three days I had began to turn away and give up on my Lord. I was locked out of the intercessory room, not because I was late, but someone simply locked the door a little early. I felt rejected and like God was taking me out of the moment of prayer. 

I felt angry and I could not let that anger go as I served. I stole away and had a quiet time. I read 1 John 4:19 “We love because He first loved us.” I was struggling to believe in God’s perfect love. I had allowed myself to experience guilt and shame over my behavior as if that was what God wanted me to feel when I am disobedient to Him. The reality is that His love is so perfect that He loved me when I was already jacked up. His love is so perfect that He wants me to remember that His love is perfect. He wants me to lean on Him first, not when all else fails. He wants me to fully lean on who He is today, first thing in the morning; place my confidence in Him. He loves me in my jacked-up-ness. Only God’s love is perfect. It is not by any capability of our own that we love each other or ourselves, but it is through God’s love for us that we understand these things and we strive to love Him back. With that He gives us the gift of His son’s blood so that we can see and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and be clothed in God’s glorious love for each of us and so love one another.