I hear this song so often, but I rarely stop to think about
it: how does Jesus really love me?
I heard it put last week that “the chief way that Jesus
loves us is in our weakness, our immaturity, our inability” and I can add my
naïveté, my outright failure, my stubbornness, the list really goes on and on.
His love means the most to me when I know that I really don’t deserve it, and
those are the opportunities that He has to really show the depth of His love
for us.
How then do I take John 13:34, when Jesus says, “A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that
you also love one another,”?
I have had the excellent opportunity of having the Lord lay
someone specifically on my heart here in Timbutini to minister to: and she’s a
woman who lives with us on our homestead who we get to see every day! Colile is
a beautiful, incredible girl; I love her so much. The first few weeks were
amazing, getting to know her, reading the Bible with her, painting her nails,
just loving her! But, we have been here a month now, and like everyone that I
love, sometimes I don’t like them very much! Getting to know Colile better and
spending more and more time with her revealed to me something I should not have
been shocked by: she’s a sinner too! Just like me! Who would have thought…
For a few days this really stressed me out (funny how these
revelations always seem to) and I could not figure out how I was going to
proceed, she had hurt my feelings and she didn’t even know it and the Lord
still was telling me to minister to His heart through her! I kept on asking the
Lord, “How can you love me and expect me to be around someone who hurt me?”
And this is where I came to John 13:34 – loving others as
Jesus loves me: in their weakness, their immaturity, their faults that hurt us,
their failures, their rough edges. And now I wonder if I have ever truly loved
someone when I haven’t had the opportunity of loving them in their weaknesses.
Jesus sure hasn’t, at least not with me! It is another excellent opportunity
and challenge that my Father in Heaven has blessed me with. I think that this
is just another way in this time that the Lord is drawing me close, revealing
His heart to me, and bringing closer intimacy with Him by learning to love like
He loves.
Oh, how He loves us!
