As I was driving home tonight, listening to some music, something in the song I was listening to struck me in a way it never had before. The song was talking about giving everything to God, my hands, my feet, my heart, my life…and my love.
I think that’s something I know and say, I mean of course, if I say everything I am and have belong to God, then that would include my love. But tonight I started really thinking about what that means. When I say yes, my love belongs to God, how does that look?
I started thinking about all the things I “love.” Then, I started thinking about the people I love, and how I love them. Do I use my love, wait, God’s love on things worthy of it? Do I love people in a way that God would want me to? I’m honestly not sure if I could say I do.
I believe that we were given the ability to love by God. The only way that we can love is because Jesus Christ’s death allows us to move past our sinfulness and lets us truly love. He is the ultimate example of love. He is the very definition of love. I also think that knowing this, how can I claim ownership over my love? I can’t.
If I say I’m giving God everything, then my love is a large part of that. I can say, “Father, use me, send me where ever You want me to go, take all of me,” but if I hold on to my love…what good is saying any of that? God wants our hearts, our love, they belong to Him.
So this being said, I want to surrender my love. I cannot claim possession over it. I cannot say that I need it to love things, or a place, or a boy, or comfort, or even friends and family. All of these are not bad things, and I think we need to love people, don’t get me wrong. In fact, by letting go of our love, I think we will actually be able to love people better. I’m not saying to stop loving, but instead stop telling your heart what and how it should love. God is the only Master of our hearts. He is the only One who our hearts are made to beat for. By letting Him take all of our heart, we gain a new one. He takes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. When we no longer try to control our love, we can love people in a way we never could before.
I went back to my youth group last week and they have been watching a documentary type video on the persecuted church in Colombia. The part that really stuck out to me was the testimony of a guerilla warrior in prison. He was a part of a group that stopped a bus full of people, forced them out of the bus, tied them up, and used machetes and machine guns to kill all of them. Except for one man. One man lived through it all. In fact, while they were chopping at him with a machete, he was trying to tell them about Jesus. Now this guerilla is in prison. And he is a follower of Christ. The man he nearly killed visited him in prison and told him the Gospel. In fact, while the guerilla was giving his testimony he started crying during parts of it, and his teacher and mentor was sitting next to him, comforting him. He was wearing an eye patch and nearly blind, because of guerilla who had tried to kill him. The same man that he was now comforting.
This man’s love did not belong to himself. You couldn’t love someone like that without the power of Christ. I pray that we would learn to let God use us and our love to show His love. What better way to love people than if we have the author of love working through us? Where ever we are this summer, another country, another state, summer camp, or even right at home, let us remember our love is not our own. Let God use it how He wants to use it.
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