Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Choice to Love
By Ramone - June 7, 2007
This one started one day while I was teaching in class back in February. I think I asked the student a question somehow related to the textbook, "What's the most important thing in life?" I can't remember how the student answered, and I'm sure if I had to answer I probably didn't answer in deep honesty -- it's much easier to ask those kinds of questions than answer them! But the question got me inside. What is the most important thing in life?
Honestly, I knew the answer for me: God. God is the most important thing in life.
It sounds like some kind of obligatory answer I have to give, that I ought to give because I know He is supposed to be the most important thing in my life. But in moments of stillness in His presence, I do know it's true and I truly truly know He is the most important thing in my life. But the mere sound of saying such a thing sounds too much like the "correct answer", like the I'm-trying-to-be-spiritual answer. It sounds like that so much that I instantly doubt my sincerity in saying such a thing, and wonder if I'm saying it just because I should, because I have to or ought to.
But then the question somehow quickly flipped back on me:
What is the most important thing to Him?
The answer came and melts me: Me.
If I ask Him this question, He says, "You are the most important thing to Me."
I am the most important thing to Him, not because He has to make me the most important thing, but because He wants to! I am His priority because He has chosen to make me important to Him!
And that is agape love! It is a choice to love, and through that the river will flow and overflows. Thank You, God! Because of His choice to love us, the river of His love and blessing flows into our lives and overflows.
This is a picture that shows that choice -- His choice to give us love, and also our choice to let in His love as He knockes on the doors of our hearts, and finally our choice to give the love He gave us to others.
Because of our surrender to His love, His love flows even wider into our lives. And when we find the gates of our heart shut to those who have wounded us in some way, He calls us to choose to extend to them the agape love He chose to give us. As we enter His choice to love (to agape), the floodgates open onto the dry and barren land, not only in others' hearts, but in our own hearts! When we cut off others by refusing to give them His love, part of us inside dries up and doesn't experience His refreshing, cooling, life-generating, healing and restoring water. But as we choose to open the gates of our heart to let His love flow through to others, as we enter His choice to love, then the river of life pours through.
What is it that Jesus said about this in John 7:38?
"Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said,As I jotted down a quick note about this after class, I felt Him saying,
streams of living water will flow from within him."
"Open the gates, open the gates of your heart. Open the gates."
Note: if you have trouble opening the gates of your heart -- choosing to love -- don't be worried. That's normal. We need His help to do that, too! Just ask Him to make you willing to be made willing to give His love to someone. And as you do that, ask Him to make you willing to be made willing to receive His love, too! Because the choice & act of giving His love is not merely you "giving" something, but it is actually you receiving something -- receiving and accepting the love He already has for someone else which you may not have been willing to accept because of the pain or wound you felt from them. When we're wounded or upset at someone, the gates of our heart close toward that person, and the last thing we want to do is give them love! But God saw their deeds ahead of time and gave His Son for them! Just like He saw your deeds & mine long before we did them, yet He chose to love us by giving His Son's life for us. All He's asking us to do in this is see that the same love He has for us He also has for them. We may not always feel that this is true, particularly when we're hurt, but as we choose to forgive and recognize the truth of His love toward us and towards them, we can ask Him to make us willing to be made willing to recognize it for them, too.
Blessings in Him as you choose to enter into His love -- and ask Him to enable you to do that -- and as you enter into His love for others. Blessings in Him as you let His water of life come through, His Spirit, to refresh you and bring forth life to the dried land!
*****
P.S. When I showed this picture to a friend last night, it struck me immediately that the picture looks downright "prophetic"... in the sense that many people receive visions or dreams or words or prophecies. It looks like something out of Isaiah. As I briefly explained it to my friend, I wondered that maybe to some the story behind it might sound a bit too plain -- that it's just about love, about the choice to love. It doesn't sound very "prophetic". But let me tell you, it is!! It is what Isaiah and the prophets all talked about -- the choice of God to give agape love to us in the death and resurrection of Son! His choice to love and choosing to enter into His love is what opens the window in the skies!
# posted by Ramone @ 8:15 PM 
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Be blessed in His heart today! His heart is for you!