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A Christian
Thought for the Month - February 2012
Thoughts for believers & seekers
Thought for the Month -
Confidence in the love of God
1 John 4:8 God is love.
If you go into a pub or restaurant you can’t help but see advertisements for Valentine’s Day, the day of love. I see on the February Seasonal Reflections page of this site explanations concerning that day, so I won’t add to that, but it did set me thinking about love, and especially God’s love.
There are those who declare that if you read the Old Testament you can’t possibly believe in the God of love that the apostle John speaks about in his first letter in the New Testament. However, when you start looking around the Old Testament you find lots of references to Him being a God of love, so how does that square with some of the things we find in the Old Testament. Well, put aside the misguided human beings who did bad things in God’s name, what about the rest? Well I have two thoughts on that:
The first thought is that so often when people cite examples about God’s apparent harshness, they get it wrong. I’m asked why did God instruct Israel to wipe out the Canaanites? Well, if you take the trouble to read carefully, you find that on a ratio of about 3 to 1, when it comes to His instructions, mostly He speaks about driving them out of the land, not killing them. If they resisted - and they had to be pretty hard-hearted to resist with all else that was happening - then the usual rules of war that existed then (and now) prevailed.
But there is a bigger misunderstanding which I suspect St. Valentine’s day only strengthens, and that is that love is always a nice mushy feeling. Think for a moment about a dad with his young children, and the way he expresses love towards them. Here are a variety of ways, and they are ALL expressions of love:
1. He works long hours to earn money to provide for the needs of the family. It often means he is not there for them - but it is an expression of the strong love he has for them.
2. He sits with his children, reading to them and listening to them, and encouraging them. He is there for them and they feel secure with him there. He answers their questions, when they ask, at a level they will understand, and shares his wisdom with them when they ask for it.
3. When they ask for things that are harmful, he withholds them and gently says ‘no’. They may not understand and so think that he is mean, but it is an expression of his caring concern for their protection and well-being that makes him say ‘no’.
4. From time to time, he brings necessary correction, for he can see destructive traits growing in his child and so he brings this correction to try to encourage them not to go in that direction. Sometimes that correction appears hard and painful, but he only brings it when it has become obvious that his wilful child will respond to no other correction.
5. Sometimes he stands back and simply watches his child from a distance. He has conveyed his wisdom but his child needs to learn it for himself or herself, sometimes by the hard way of failure. Yet he is always there in the shadows watching them, ready to come the moment he is called and always there for them.
Each one of those is an expression of love, a good expression, that we would expect of a loving dad. In fact, if those things are absent we question the father’s love, care and concern for his children.
Now apart from the first one, we find all of the remaining four are seen as expressions of God’s love throughout the Bible. Some people say that God gave up on man after Adam and Eve decided to do their own thing, but I find in the rest of Genesis and the rest of the Bible, God keeps on reaching out in love to bring goodness, (always an expression of love), to those who will receive it.
When the apostle John wrote “God IS love,” he didn’t mean that love is God, but that everything about God - every thought He has, every word He speaks and every action He takes - is an expression of love. When we read the Bible with this truth in the back of our mind, it may mean we start seeing things very differently.
One last thing: unlike human love, God’s love does not vary, so whatever we do, He will not stop loving us. He may hate our behaviour but will still love us. Perhaps the big question is, how much will I let Him express His love toward me? Have a good month.
1 John 4:8 God is love.
If you go into a pub or restaurant you can’t help but see advertisements for Valentine’s Day, the day of love. I see on the February Seasonal Reflections page of this site explanations concerning that day, so I won’t add to that, but it did set me thinking about love, and especially God’s love.
There are those who declare that if you read the Old Testament you can’t possibly believe in the God of love that the apostle John speaks about in his first letter in the New Testament. However, when you start looking around the Old Testament you find lots of references to Him being a God of love, so how does that square with some of the things we find in the Old Testament. Well, put aside the misguided human beings who did bad things in God’s name, what about the rest? Well I have two thoughts on that:
The first thought is that so often when people cite examples about God’s apparent harshness, they get it wrong. I’m asked why did God instruct Israel to wipe out the Canaanites? Well, if you take the trouble to read carefully, you find that on a ratio of about 3 to 1, when it comes to His instructions, mostly He speaks about driving them out of the land, not killing them. If they resisted -
But there is a bigger misunderstanding which I suspect St. Valentine’s day only strengthens, and that is that love is always a nice mushy feeling. Think for a moment about a dad with his young children, and the way he expresses love towards them. Here are a variety of ways, and they are ALL expressions of love:
1. He works long hours to earn money to provide for the needs of the family. It often means he is not there for them -
3. When they ask for things that are harmful, he withholds them and gently says ‘no’. They may not understand and so think that he is mean, but it is an expression of his caring concern for their protection and well-
5. Sometimes he stands back and simply watches his child from a distance. He has conveyed his wisdom but his child needs to learn it for himself or herself, sometimes by the hard way of failure. Yet he is always there in the shadows watching them, ready to come the moment he is called and always there for them.
Each one of those is an expression of love, a good expression, that we would expect of a loving dad. In fact, if those things are absent we question the father’s love, care and concern for his children.
Now apart from the first one, we find all of the remaining four are seen as expressions of God’s love throughout the Bible. Some people say that God gave up on man after Adam and Eve decided to do their own thing, but I find in the rest of Genesis and the rest of the Bible, God keeps on reaching out in love to bring goodness, (always an expression of love), to those who will receive it.
When the apostle John wrote “God IS love,” he didn’t mean that love is God, but that everything about God -
One last thing: unlike human love, God’s love does not vary, so whatever we do, He will not stop loving us. He may hate our behaviour but will still love us. Perhaps the big question is, how much will I let Him express His love toward me? Have a good month.