The Worth Of Knowing

“I luv you. And you luv me.”

I was around 6, I think. I sat next to Grandma’s little lamp with a red pen and a piece of scrap paper. I wanted to write a note to Mom and Dad about how I loved them and was so happy and grateful for them. I struggled to find a way to translate the feeling of safety and comfort I felt with them into words (preferably three letters or less).

If the Christian faith is not just a religion, but a relationship then my goal is not simply to say “I believe God loves me” but to intimately know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Ephesians 3:18-19 NLT

God’s love is more than words on a page.

It’s not even contained in one miraculous act in history.

We can’t fully understand and explain the extent of God’s love and yet we still experience it daily whether we acknowledge it or not.

Logic fails to fully explain God’s love. It is too much and too real. It spills over into our senses, emotions and even imagination.

What a loss if I keep His love in the “Things I Know” category of my mind and not the “Things I Experience,” “Things I Sense With My Body,” “Things I Feel With My Emotions,” and “Things I Find Hope In” categories.

I wonder what keeps us from letting God’s love into those aspects of our minds and lives. What are the lies that shape how we see ourselves and God that keep us from letting it in?

Maybe I don’t think God’s love is adequate enough to actually do a good work in me.

Or that God’s love for me is reluctant – that He needed be convinced to love me by Jesus’ sacrificial death.

Or that because I’m unworthy of God’s love I need to more or less punish myself and feel deep sorrow before He will let me really know His love.

Or that if I reach out my feeble hand I will be met by God standing with arms crossed, smirking at me for thinking it would be that easy to be in a close relationship with Him.

I don’t think those things are true. But I do hesitate to let what I know change what I emotionally choose to do … doubt God and keep His love at a distance.

I feel the question rising up in me, “I thought I shouldn’t live by what I feel, but by what I know?”

When I look closer, though I realize I ask this question out of fear.

Because I already said I know God’s love for me is real.

So what is wrong from feeling what I know is real and then letting it have real impact on the way I live (ie lead to obedience to God)?

If we know it’s true intellectually, then what emotionally/relationally is holding us back from noticing our current experience of being loved by God?

Maybe we start by being honest with God about that fear of drawing near.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” John 15:9 ESV

[while many things have encouraged me to view my relationship with God from a different angle and question the way I relate to God, this episode of Attached to the Invisible and this episode of Being Known Podcast were definitely swirling in my mind as I wrote this post.]