Lesson 287: LOVE

“God is love.”

I tell you what, if I had a dime for every time I have heard a Christian say that…

Growing up and all throughout high school, that phrase always bothered me.

To me, it implied that God was just a fluffy little angel, floating around somewhere up there with nothing but warm, fuzzy feelings for everyone he created down here.

While He does love us, he is also a God of wrath, He is sovereign, omnipresent, all-powerful, etc. He has so many attributes and to just focus on one of them and say that God IS love just seemed so narrow-minded to me. It shrunk God into less of what He is.

Now I still encounter people who take His love too far, write off all things theological, and somehow teleport back to the 60s singing, “All you need is love”.

HOWEVER comma, since coming to Austria, I have learned that God’s love is a weighty issue and it is a HUGE part of God’s character.  

I was thrown into an unknown world. I don’t think there is anything on this earth that could have prepared me for how many things I just didn’t know before coming here.

I didn’t know that I would miss my parents so much.

I didn’t know that I would be an au pair for children who run wild and crazy.

I didn’t know that I would have so much time to myself.

I didn’t know that I would live up in the boondocks with a very unreliable bus system to get be around.

I also didn’t know that I would live in arguably the most beautiful place in all of Austria.

I didn’t know that I would grow closer to Jesus than ever before.

I didn’t know that I would gain an incredible thankfulness and appreciation for home that I could not have gained any other way.

I didn’t know that I would learn to love time on my own.

I didn’t know that I would love the Bible more every single day, that I would have an abundance of prayer time on a daily basis, and that I would find a true and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Who would have thought that all that would happen in the middle of nowhere in the Austrian Alps?

Who would have thought…

As I sit here reflecting on this first half of my adventure, I can’t help but think one thing: I am so loved.

I am so overwhelmed and overtaken by God’s love for me.

I once heard one off my pastors give an analogy about God’s grace. He said to imagine yourself standing in an open field with nothing but hills and luscious green grass surrounding you. Suddenly, a bucket of water appears above you and soaks you to the bone. The water doesn’t stop. It never runs out. You just stand there, taking it in, all the while getting wetter and wetter.

Now picture God’s grace as the water.

That’s how I feel.

Who am I to deserve such love? Who am I to deserve such grace? Who am I to deserve such an experience? Who am I to deserve six months, rent free, in the Austrian Alps, with a monthly income, and opportunities to share the name of Jesus every single day?

The answer is that I, in no way, shape, or form, deserve any of it.

The answer is that I serve a God who loves me more than I can fathom.

It all hit me last night while I Skyped my dad.

He knows how much I love Christmas and am sad to be missing the traditions. So as we were talking, he said, “Hold on, I’ll be right back!” When he returned, he had taken pictures of every Christmas decoration in our house and a video of our new fire place and proceeded to hold his phone up to the camera and scroll through the Christmas cheer.

I love that man. Let me just ask one more time…who am I to deserve the parents that I have? Who am I to deserve the family I was placed in? For the record, my family is better than your family. I mean who else has a brother who will play and sing you Johnny Cash songs over Skype, or a sister who will Skype you during Thanksgiving dinner, or parents who will send you candy, movies, and warm coats to brave the cold Austrian winter?

So this morning, as I am sitting on the couch in my friends’ house, with candles lit, Christmas music playing, and snow falling softly outside the window, I am snuggled up in blankets, a big sweatshirt, and fuzzy socks, drinking hot chocolate, and I feel loved.

So God is a lot of things. He is wrathful, He is sovereign, He is faithful, He is all-powerful. But maybe, just maybe, it’s true what they say.

Maybe God IS love.

The most quoted verse in the Bible seems to take on a whole new meaning.

“For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  

Who am I to deserve to be saved from myself? Who am I to deserve eternal life with Jesus?

^“4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:4-9