He asks me over and over and over again. Each time, I answer confidently: “Yes.” He keeps asking, as if He’s not satisfied. I stop replying. What is this about? He tells me to take my time and be honest with Him.
Sigh.
Okay, Lord.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath… and brace myself.
.
.
.
“I… don’t know how.”
As I search my heart, I can see that I’ve been resisting His affection. I don’t really know why. But – to be honest – I also don’t really get the point of this exercise. Is it not enough to know that He loves me? Do we have to get all mushy about it?
And – hmm. Actually, when I really think about it – it’s not only His affection I’ve been resisting. The people who (I suppose) love me the most… I don’t always let them. My heart longs to love, but to have it in return? It doesn’t always feel important. Why? And why am I only realising this now?
Alright.
“Please, show me what it means and what it looks like.”
He indulges me. He shows me an image of the two of us. He’s carrying me like a father taking His sleepy child up to bed. With His arms snuggly around me, my skinny legs dangle above the ground as my face nestles into His neck. I can almost feel the warmth of His embrace like the sun against my skin on a summer afternoon.
I’ve never felt so safe.
My eyes fill.
He knows exactly how to get to me. He knows my love language is physical touch. My chest is heavy and the golf ball at the back of my throat makes it difficult to get the words out:
“I’ve never been held.”
I’m conflicted. I’m grateful for this sweet vision, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. The hurt behind my statement, albeit an exaggeration, runs deep. I wait for His response.
“Yes, you have.”
He proceeds to enlighten me. The moment I was born, my mother held me. I don’t remember, of course. But it happened. An irrepressible instinct. A pure, overwhelming and unconditional bond of duty and love with a tiny person she had just met. I was held every day thereafter, until I got ‘too big.’
Mmm, I guess.
He goes on. He challenges me to consider that the pure, overwhelming and unconditional love of my mother, is nothing compared to His feelings towards me.
I try, but I can’t. And for some reason, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.
He goes on. He tells me that before my parents even met, He was the One holding me. He held me as He knit me together in my mother’s womb. He held me as my lungs filled with air for the first time. He’s been holding out His arms to me ever since… but now, it would seem, I’ve gotten ‘too big‘.
‘Is that really all You want?’
I may not quite understand where this is going yet, but one thing I do know is that He knows me – so deeply and so personally.
He understands my language and how my mind works. And He never speaks a word in vain. He reveals to me why He’s using the word ‘just’ in His questioning. Aside from adding a certain air of exasperation, it means ‘only‘ (or ‘merely‘ or ‘simply‘).
Now I see what He’s really asking me:
“Will you only let Me love you?”
Really, Lord? Only? Is that really all You want?
He’s dealing with me. He’s not shying away from my trigger points. He’s exposing the things that have taken my attention. For one, ‘Being good’.
But… what’s wrong with that?
I love Him. So naturally, I want to do right by Him. I want to know – and live in – His express will at all times; to please Him, and to live righteously. These are, of course, all good things. And I know that it’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit, and not in my own strength, that I can do them. I’m pretty confident it’s not legalism.
I’m not trying to earn His love – I know He loves me unconditionally.
Yet, still.
Somehow.
I’ve never really managed to get my head around this concept:
My identity as the Beloved.
I’ve known Him as Lord, but not as Lover.
I’ve loved Him… but here’s what He’s revealing; although He desires my love – so much so that it’s the single greatest commandment – my love for Him is not the principle thing.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” – 1 John 4:10
This is love.
Not mine, but His.
My love is selfish.
My love is flawed.
My love fails.
His love? It makes the word ‘perfect’ seem inadequate.
Yet it turns out that, until this point, I’ve never had a revelation of God’s love for me. I’ve known that God loves all – He sent His Son for all (John 3:16). But I’ve never wrapped my mind around the idea that ‘all’ includes me. And more devastatingly, I’ve underestimated the gravity of this.
I’ve grown tired of hearing about ‘soft’ subjects like ‘love’ all the time. As a maturing believer, all I’ve wanted to hear is the meaty, gritty, challenging, uncomfortable, I’m-coming-into-your-back-yard, convicting stuff. I’ve settled for an academic understanding of His love over a tangible experience of it.
Little have I known that I’ve been missing out on the principle thing.
Little have I known that there is nothing ‘soft’ about the Love of God, and in fact, it is the grittiest subject of all. Now that my eyes are being opened, an academic understanding just won’t do.
“Slow down. Let’s take this one step at a time, starting with this crucial first step. I want you to treat this as if it’s the only thing I want from you.”
God loves me.
Every instinct in my body is telling me that there must be more to it. A distant voice tells me that I don’t deserve it, and it’s true. But He wants me to park right here. I mustn’t move a muscle until His Love has become more real to me than life.
YHWH
loves
me.
I’ve been called out. I’ve been found guilty of reducing it to mere sentiment, to something that’s ‘beneath me’.
But even now, as I begin to consider His Love, and its implications, I’m undone by the wonder of it.
‘A bride for His Son’
“He has made everything beautiful and appropriate in its time.
“He has also planted eternity [a sense of divine purpose] in the human heart [a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun can satisfy, except God]—yet man cannot find out (comprehend, grasp) what God has done (His overall plan) from the beginning to the end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11 (AMP).
The very nature of God is mystery, yet He has given us a divine yearning to understand, know and relate to Him.
What is His overall plan?
What is my divine purpose?
Whatever he believes, every human being asks himself at some point in his life: “Why am I here?”
I have by no means understood the depths of the mysteries of God, but there is one thing of which I am certain – because He has gone to great lengths to make it explicit.
Everything that God has done – from beginning to end – is unfathomable to the human mind. But I know that I know, that at least in part, it is an ever-unfolding story of a Father preparing a bride for His Son. The divine drama is a love story. The heart of God is to be with His creatures.
The Bridegroom is Jesus, and the Bride, His church whom He has cherished and longed for, even in her rebellion.
“I will betroth you to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me
In righteousness and justice,
In lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness,
And you shall know the Lord.” – Hosea 2:19-20
The word of the Lord to the prophet Hosea, a promise of redemption for Israel in the midst of her idolatry. But it isn’t only a promise of redemption; it’s an engagement – a commitment to be married eternally.
Throughout scripture we see a holy thread of a Husband who wants to ‘make it work’ with His adulterous wife. To bring her unto Himself. To make her holy, so that they can be together forever.
Betrothals. Brides. Weddings. Marriage suppers.
Isn’t it clear that this God is… a Lover? Why else would He go to such extreme lengths to be married? And to me? Is it because I’m loveable? Is it because I’m special? Is it because I’m worthy?
Or could it be as simple as this?:
God is Love.
Love extended Himself towards us, His dust-creatures, even whilst we hated Him.
How do I know this?
Because whilst I was still a sinner, whilst I was still living in enmity with God – Christ died for me. And let’s remember what this statement means. As if it were not enough for God to stoop so low as to take on human form, He died. Of course, He didn’t stay dead. But let’s not get it twisted – He died. Willingly. Being without sin, He took the death that I deserved. And a most undignified death at that.
The Bible tells us in more ways than one that He did this for love. If we allow ourselves to reflect on just what He did – in dying for (and in the place of) sinners – the only logical explanation is that He loves us so very much. (Romans 5:8).
But there’s another layer to this love that I haven’t experienced until now.
It must have taken a great deal of love for Jesus to have sacrificed His life, yes. But for the first time, I’m realising the love of Jesus in His desire to be one with me in holy matrimony; His sacrifice making this possible.
Jesus did not die to do me a favour, He did it because it pleased the Father to ransom me for Himself. It’s what He wanted. The cross isn’t about me, it’s about the Father’s will, and the Son’s heart.
Here’s one of the prayers of Jesus in the face of His imminent demise – just take a look at what was on His heart:
“Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” – John 17:24
For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. The expectant joy of a desire soon to be fulfilled; it would soon be made possible, for someone like me, to be with Him in His eternal home.
‘Covenant love’
God’s promise of betrothal made to the children of Israel centuries before Jesus still rings true today.
Because of His holiness, sin had gotten in the way of us being with Him forever. So He made the ultimate, perfect, atoning act of self-sacrifice to deal with the consequences of sin once and for all.
No more separation.
A veil torn in two from top to bottom.
The restoration of an eternal communion which starts here on earth the moment a sinner repents and believes.
Not because we deserve it, but because it pleases Him.
He wants us with Him.
Why? I still cannot fathom, all I can conclude is that He must really, really love us.
His overall plan must have something to do with His being irrevocably in love with humanity.
This love was and is not just an action. He is not an apathetic God who acted out of duty towards us; there was feeling involved. We have become so content to proudly declare that ‘love is not a feeling’. In doing so, we have conflated the love of God with our woefully ordinary love. We have undermined the intensity and consistency with which the Father feels affection for His Beloved. Only love of a certain intensity could have led Him to the cross. The Passion of the Christ, the word ‘passion’ here referring to His suffering. But I can’t help but feel there was another kind of passion at play.
The covenant love of God is a bottomless well of affection and passionate devotion; a tangible feeling of delight in its Beloved; an everlasting, transcendent, unconditional agape; the highest form of love which runs deeper than emotion to seek the best for others; a love so selfless it gives up its life; a love so powerful it can reverse death; a love so pure it can cover a multitude of sins.
This is no ‘soft’ subject.
‘Snuggle, don’t struggle’
God has revealed His extravagant Love to all humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Yet, He’s deemed it important enough to make sure that I’m in on it. He’s taken the time to meet me at my level, and gifted me with the exact visual representation I needed, at the exact time. His love for me is revealed in the ‘holding’. An image of complete dependency; a reflection of God doing what I couldn’t do for myself in securing my redemption. I’m the sleepy child who couldn’t make it to bed on her own.
I didn’t know how much I needed to be held until I saw what it looked like, until I felt it. I didn’t know how much I needed to be loved until I saw what it looked like, until I felt it.
And I can’t afford to be ‘too big’ anymore.
.
.
.
Being held and loved by Jesus is all I need – but it’s harder than it sounds. I’m feeling His affectionate embrace for the first time and it’s lovely. I want to stay here forever. But it still feels so weird and alien to me sometimes.
We’ll get there.
He’s using this ‘season of holding’ to restore the simplicity of a loving relationship. He’s hitting ‘reset.’ He’s stripping everything away, until it’s only Him and I.
He’s taking me through a process of complete healing from the inside out – mind, body and soul. I feel the anguishes of my heart falling off me. It’s difficult to focus on pain when you’re in the bliss and sweetness of His presence.
He’s showing me things I’ve never seen. I’m still writhing about like a stubborn toddler, but He’s patiently teaching me to stop resisting. I’m learning to take the advice of a seasoned lover-boy, Eric Gilmour, as he implores us: “Snuggle, don’t struggle.”
When I hold still long enough to hear what my Beloved is really asking, I can answer Him confidently and honestly.
“Yes, I will.”
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
– Jesus Christ (John 15:9).
Close your eyes, just be held
And hear me say, how dearly you’re loved
And when you rest, that is best
And you shine brighter when you wake up
– Christy Nockels (‘Close Your Eyes’ from ‘Be Held: Lullabies for the Beloved’)
Xtine