This Place of Love

Throughout the entire Bible numerous characterizations and attributes of God are mentioned, but I John 4: 8 defines God. It says,“…for God is love.”

Our biggest issue with our families, our churches, and the society at large is that they don’t love us for who we are. Deep inside we wish there is something we could say to them that would make them truly love us totally and completely without aversion to us because of our sexuality -- or for that matter: any other attribute that makes us uniquely who we are.

Interestingly, this scripture says nothing about the love that I am to expect from other people. What it says a lot about, though, is the love that I should give to other people.

Imagine what it would be like if we could wake up tomorrow having drunken a love potion the night before. What if that potion put us in an energy state that enabled us to love everybody with whom we came into contact, regardless of how they treated us? What if when people said nasty, mean and hateful things to us, we were able to just look back at them and hold them in love -- wishing nothing but good for them? What if we genuinely cared about, and wished for, the well-being of someone who had just severely hurt us? What if someone who had profoundly wronged us needed a favor? What if we not only did the favor, but did it with great joy? What if we were not just able to do this for one day, but for one week…one month…one year…for one person…for two people…for three people…for everybody…?

Many of us are afraid to practice this kind of love because we are afraid we will be taken advantage of. We are afraid we will appear “soft” and people will just walk all over us.

It is actually quite the contrary: love is a show of profound strength. It actually sends a message that says, “I am so clear about who I am that nothing you can do can touch me.” It says, “My core cannot be disturbed by your actions toward me.” It says, “My ability to hold you in love comes from my ability to recognize that you are also God’s child -- beautiful in all respects -- even if you are not aware of your beauty.”

As I envision myself down the road on panels with other ministers, the one value added function that I would like to bring would be love. No matter what the discussion might be -- or what the mixture of the constituents might be -- I would bring an energy that could be felt by all and ignored by none. Humans will always have differences of opinion about a variety of topics and issues. Certainly when it comes to theological matters, great debates have always ensued. My vision is to be gifted with love so much that I will be able to bring disparate voices to a level of harmony -- not because they accept or agree with each other on every detail, but because love captures them and raises their sights to a new level of understanding and commitment.

I had a chance to test this recently when someone who had read my book, The Making of a Preacher: Naked in the Pulpit, contacted me and attacked me. He had a great deal of passion about his beliefs and his words hurt me very deeply. Here was my opportunity to hold him in love rather than get defensive. I prayed for wisdom and insight; and God (who never fails!) showed up and showed out! Through ways that I would have never imagined, I was able to respond to his profound anger and disgust in a loving way. After three weeks of conversation, he came around and now he is in total support of the book and my ministry. Now that's what love will do!

I believe that before my father passed he had begun to move into this place. It was so enchanting for me to watch him move from the place I saw him when I was a child to the place I saw him in his latter years. In my childhood -- although he was very knowledgeable about scripture -- he was extremely judgmental, very hostile, full of anger, and constantly condemning people. That same man, in his latter years, became so graceful. His favorite phrase (when we would talk about various people) became, “…well, let’s just pray for them.” As those words left his lips, I can still see the love that filled his heart. As I watched that transformation, it brought to my mind the scripture that says, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).

I think I finally get it. As I see it, love would not be empathy or sympathy; it’s something much deeper than that. It’s something people can feel emanating from me without me saying a word. We all know the old saying, “Actions speak louder than words.” When we really move into love, it steps in front of us and greets everyone with whom we come into contact. They know it; they feel it; they sense it -- we don’t have to open our mouth. We simply hold them in love within our heart.

Thank God, I have already begun to experience this in little doses (and I think many of us have from time to time). It manifests itself at the grocery store; at the gym; on the highway; in the neighborhood; and even in church (laugh). We know that it’s there when strangers are drawn to us for inexplicable reasons.

I remember one night I was at the gym and a young fellow saw me from across the workout floor. I laughed on the inside because he was drawn to me but he didn’t know why and he didn’t know what to say. He struggled for quite a while, trying to find an excuse to talk with me. Finally, someone had left some workout gloves on the floor beside a machine that I was about to use. He gleefully came over and asked if they were my gloves! I told him, “No”, and proceeded to engage in lighthearted conversation with him. The truth was, he was feeling agape love energy emanating from me, but did not know what it was and therefore did not know what to do with it. Since I understood what was going on, I was able to respond appropriately. This kind of occurrence will happen more and more as we learn to walk in love.

The problem is that most of us have been conditioned all of our live to walk in the antithesis of love (see Galatians 5:17-21). It is what I call ‘low energy’ living. To move from that to ‘high energy’ living (see Galatians 5:22-26) takes a lot of prayer and fasting. We must understand the value of walking in love before we will be willing to give up the old values to replace them with the new values. The old values appear to have worked well for us. We have used anger, revenge, strife, etc. to maneuver our way through life. We must come to understand the unmitigated power of love before we will be eager to pursue it as our core value. Corporations only establish a core value to set their course when they really believe that it will bring them their desired results. So if we don’t believe that love will bring us our desired results in charting through the turbulent waters of life then we won’t sincerely set out to establish it as our core value.

Because I have embraced love as my core value, I have been personally blessed to suffer in a way that enabled me to learn love at a new level. Like so much learning, our grasping is like the peeling of the layers of an onion. As we keep peeling layers we go deeper and new revelations come -- sometimes with tears. Some of My deeper love learning has come when my own son sinned against me. I experienced the hurt and anger. After going through those layers, though, the Spirit took me to a new level of love.

            Now I understand love at a level I did not understand before;

            Now I embrace love at a level I did not understand before;

            Now I enjoy love at a level I did not understand before.

Only the Spirit knows what experiences it will take to get me to the point where I will be able to embrace I Corinthians 13 with all its fervor. At least now I think I understand its beauty.