After traveling through Turkey for 6 weeks I’ve seen and learned a few things. I’ve met some really cool people and had some really unique experiences. Turkey was full of everything.
We’ve also met some really difficult people. Difficult to talk to, difficult to share with and some really difficult to love.
One man in particular, I was almost convinced of his intention to get me to dislike him as much as possible. Conversing and sharing our stories with him was inconvenient and loving him seemed impossible.
And quite frankly, it made me feel inadequate. Incapable of understanding why I did not know how to love him.
I became very frustrated, with him, with myself and even with the lesson God was teaching me. And I knew He was teaching me, because He is always teaching. I just didn’t get it, yet.
It was like a mathematical equation that didn’t work out. What I put in on one side was not equal to what came out in the other side. It was unsolved in my heart. The scale; out of balance.
And while I’m venting these flaming words, fueled by the frustration burning inside, it all suddenly sounded very familiar. I’ve heard this all before. I’ve heard it in church, I’ve heard it from Matthew through to John, I’ve heard it in the Letters of Paul.
It’s the Gospel.
God has been pouring out His perfect, unending and redeeming love on stubborn, difficult and hardheaded people for centuries!
When we were most unfriendly, unkind, uncaring and uninterested in His love, He was unlimited in His outpouring. Then He even stepped up the game; for God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
This realization reached into my chest and grabbed hold of my heart with a tight grip. But what really shook my heart, was when I realized that I too, am a stubborn, difficult and hardheaded person who sometimes reject the love of people, and even more, the perfect love of God.
But not for one second does my rejection, my incapability to accept His love, influence the measure of it’s outpour on me. The equation is unsolved and unbalanced. And it always will be. Never can we do enough of anything that will solve the mathematical imbalance between the Father’s love for us and our love for Him. And so it will remain forever. And still He chooses it.
And because of this unconditional love for us, we also have been called to show it to others, regardless of their stubbornness to accept it. Why? Because Christ did it, and commanded us to follow in His footsteps:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
John 13:34-35
And if I travel the world calling myself a disciple of The Lord, but I do not show love to those around me, including the stubborn ones, can I really call my self such as the latter?
Off course, loving all people without the help of Christ in you, is impossible. But hand in hand the intimate relationship walks with the desire to do as Christ commands. The product of this: the ability to love all with and through Christ Jesus.
It was uncapped, unconditional and unrelenting love for me. And none of us deserve it, there is no measuring stick used to determine who receives how much love.Who am I then to withhold this type of love from anyone else if I’ve received it so freely. It was given freely to me, a stubborn and hardheaded guy. Because of that, I can now give it freely to other people, even to the stubborn ones.