Love Pt. 2

If you scroll back a few entries you will find a, for the most part, confused and disjoined entry on the topic of love. Well, I have learned a lot in the past week that has offered some explination for my issues reguarding love, particularly genuine and unconditional love.

Am I any less frustrated and confused about love now? Not really, but I think I am on the road to finally understanding some things about the subject. At DWC I came to some tentative conclusions based on things I learned from the speakers, as well as my friends that I got to talk to at length about the subject.

Ultimately, my struggle with love, particularly unconditional love, is rooted in my lack of love for myself and the person that God has created me to be. I do not often love myself, I am very critical of myself, very very hard on myself, there are certian things about my person or my character that I downright hate, not because they are all problems, but because I see the imperfections, and, being a perfectionist by nature, I wish to change them but to my utter consternation I cannot.

Of course, as my friend Sean pointed out, the topic of loving oneself can, on the surface, be thought of by many people in a very negitive way. Thus it's important to distingush that I am not talking about an egotistical or false love for myself, but simply a love that grows out of God's love and acceptance for me in spite of all that I do wrong and all of my sinful imperfections. If we do not love God, then we do not love ourselves (and thus struggle with a negitive self-image and insecurities that keep us from growing spiritually and emotionally), and if we do not love God, and ourselves, then we will be hard pressed to love others because we don't have that pool of love inside of us to draw from.

Think of the cycle that leads to the formation of a thunderstorm. In this example, we are represented by dry lakes, evaporated by the sin in our lives. The only way for our personal lake to be filled is water from God, we often attempt to fill our own lakes though our own means, a list of things we need to accomplish, good works, doing good deeds for others out of untimately selfish ambishion, but we cannot keep up with the evaporated forces of sin and our own fallen humanity. water represents love in this case. Our faith, trust, and desire to know God is like moisture on a hot day that rises and forms clouds. These clouds, though the love and grace of God (which in this case is represented by the atmospheric instability that allows storms to devlop, grow and become towering masses filled with tons of water, which represents the infinite amount of love that God has to bestow on us. This water pours out of the clouds in a torrential fashion, filling our lakes to the brim. The finite borders of my lake can only hold so much water until it is completely saturated. This water has no where to go but overflow and fill up the other lakes around us. This, in this way, we recieve an amazing amount of love from God and then it overflows and manifests itself in selfless love for others. The more that we recieve from God, the more we will pour it into the lives of others. If we are not searching after God and seeking to serve him, if we try to fill our lakes with sin or superfical good works, then we will not have the moisture necessary to ignite the downpour of divine love that we so desperately need to have in order to genuinely love others.

It is importiant here to have a visual picture of what I am saying or it may not click. I know that I think more visually than most people do, but still I am hopeful that the picture, and the point that goes along with it, makes sense to you. It is importiant to note that the closer we are in fellowship, the more likely we are to recieve love from each other, just as two lake that are located near each other are more likely to pour into each other when they expand in a heavy rain. If a group of people, or lakes, is actively seeking to grow closer to God together, then they are unquestionably going to be saturated with love for one another. This is really helping me visualize what I have been trying to figure out. I will probably use this example in the future and I am hopeful that I will contenue to learn not only how to love, but how to learn to experence love in a new way.

- Jordan