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"God is Love."
This is a truth. The Bible says it.
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."1st John 4:8
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.1st John 4:16
"God is Love."
But our thinking on this matter is way too shallow. Love is deeper and more complex than the trite way in which this truism is typically expressed. We tend to see just the lovey-dovey, mushy, unconditional aspect. There is far more to love than that. We sell God short when we focus on a single aspect of love, say "This, therefore, is God," then say that God must or must not behave in certain ways because of our myopic interpretation of "love."
Make Mistake #1: Love Gives
There is a growing philosophy which states, "What is the greatest characteristic of love? Love gives." I heard T.D. Jakes say once, "For God so loved the world that he gave. Don't tell me you love and you have never given." That's all true, as far as it goes, but there is more to it. There are more possibilities. There are more layers. To make this an absolute is to constrain God and our experience of Him, and in so doing harm ourselves when God behaves in ways we think He shouldn't. Suddenly we "just don't understand" what is going on. We authored our own confusion because we defined barriers for God, barriers that do not exist; then He has the audacity to step outside of them? to walk around as if they don't even exist?! Imagine that! Selah....
Sometimes love must be expressed by not giving. If your child is addicted, the worst you can to is give an unending supply of that to which the child is addicted. If your child has no concept of how to use money and constantly runs through it like water from a tap, it would be reckless and foolish to give your child an unending supply. These are but two examples. There are countless ways giving can be far more damaging than withholding. In many instances, to give is to destroy completely. That God will not allow. God looks to the individual and to the ultimate result when determining His actions.
How shallow is it to say, "You must give this to me because you claim to love me. Give me!!! Well, then, you don't really love me, because love gives!" It sounds all too much like that classic teenage boy ploy for getting his girlfriend into bed, "If you really loved me you'd have sex with me." And we pull this on God?!
Tough Love
When we focus on the soft, mushy, giving aspects of love, we ignore that sometimes love must be firm and resistant. There is a thing called "tough love" in which the expression of love is taking a hard and difficult stand for the sake and well being of the one loved. When God withholds, or when God allows misfortune, or when God engineers hard things to confront us in our lives, there is always one love motivated intent on His part: that we would come to the place where we need to be. That might call for repentance. That might call for us to learn a lesson we have been stiff necked against. It is not necessarily the result of wrong or misdoing on our part, just that we have not been heading in the positive and necessary direction we need, and we have reached a point where the only hope for our being set right is a hard path. This too is love.
My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.Proverbs 3:11-12
You must remove the chaff from the wheat. Good must be discerned from bad. From beginning to end, Old Testament to New, the principal is expressed in the Bible. Was God against Jonah when the storm arose? Did God not love Jonah while he was in the belly of the fish? Of course God was pulling for Jonah! Of course God loved Jonah! These events happened that Jonah might again return to the true path. Are the plagues and torments of the tribulation an expression of hatred from God? Of course not!
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.Revelation 2:21
And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.
And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.Revelation 16: 9,11
It is all that the children might turn away from the path that is leading them to Hell and eternal condemnation. It is all that they might repent, for their own sakes, and enter into the eternal glory of Heaven, the joyousness of being one with God, rather than the eternal pain and misery of a dark, solitary, tortured existence in Hell. This is love.
God Is Love, Regardless Of The Expression
You will cause yourself emotional turmoil and pain if you convince yourself that God's love is only expressed by giving. When the inevitable storms of live come upon you, you will place demands on God He is not obligated to meet. You will wonder why He does not love you because He is not giving as you think he should.
It is far better to recognize that God is love, but love is expressed in many ways. Have the unquestioning conviction that not only is God love, but that He unwaveringly and always loves you. See that no matter what you go through, what storms you face, what you receive or don't receive, God's love is a constant and is always expressed toward you whatever way is best for your well being -- no matter how it may appear to you at the time.
The ability to see that all was for the best is only truly gained after coming out the other side. It is the recognition that God's undying love is ever guiding us to our greatest expression that allows us to endure and pass through to that other side and that marvelous destiny that awaits each one of us in Christ.
(Romans 10:9, John 3:17, John 5:24, John 1:12)
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