Stress is not from God

Yesterday a friend told of a woman who said to her husband, “I love you, but right now I don’t like you very much.” Obviously the last part was about his behavior, and the first part was about her choice to love him anyway. How does that work?

In the kingdom of God, we learn that love is about how we treat and behave toward others. It is not based on a merit system. That is, the love of God is about who God is, not about whether we deserve it or not. The NT makes this very plain. However, our human tendency is to think that love has to be earned. We love those who agree with us, or please us, or do things in harmony with our desires and we suppose that if we are like that for others, they will love us. This is not the way God loves.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)

Today’s reading says this: “If we would know God, we must know what love is; and then we must apply to God all the best and highest that we know of love. For God is absolutely under the law of love; that is, He is under an inevitable constraint to obey it. He alone of all the universe, because His very essence or nature is love, cannot help loving. We whose natures are not altogether composed of love but are mixed up with a great many other things, do not always love. Because this is the case with ourselves, we think it must also be the case with God; and we torment ourselves with imagining that because of our own special unworthiness He will surely fail to love us. What a useless torment that is!”

I know that torment. In planning a big family reunion, a big challenge came by email last night. I woke this morning fearful that I could not handle this, forgetting that the reunion is God’s idea and how much He is enabling me. It took several minutes of confessing my fears and rehearsing the truth about God before the knots in my stomach unkinked. Who was I trusting anyway? Myself? Such useless torment indeed. A careful and repeated reading of these verses is restoring peace of mind and trust that God will always be with me, no matter how big the challenges…

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:9–19)

PRAY: Jesus, Your love is not based on my performance or ability. I know that Your grace and strength come through even when I feel the weakest. Forgive my lapse into doubt and fear. Not only that, I’m doing this reunion to show Your love to the people who are coming, and I cannot do that if I doubt it myself. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief and grant me the fullness of Your Spirit that I can joyfully meet this challenge in love and with a sound mind, not in fear and with stress.