Chapter 13

Love REALLY is
the "Greatest of These"

I guess what I realized most from going through this workshop (see previous posts) was that I was missing out on a whole lot. Something that seemed to be sickeningly lacking in Christianity as I knew it.

((LOVE))

I really had no idea that Jesus really did love me. I felt like He was most likely proud of me for keeping all of the rules and doing the right things and at the same time for some reason gravely disappointed in me.

But that isn't love at all, is it?

Being proud of a person's accomplishments and loving a person for who they are really are two totally different things.

Of course, I had HEARD a million times, Jesus loves you. But truly, if I were honest, I couldn't really see
how that was true in my life and certainly never FELT the love of God inside of me.

 I finally FELT the love of God deep in my soul during the workshop, when the walls that had been surrounding my heart, "guarding" me from betrayal, rejection, fear, well all sorts of things, were gone.

 Part of the workshop is visualizing your heart being completely white. We all start out with a clean slate, so to speak and then as life happens, our heart begins to be hurt and wounded. 

After it is wounded, we begin to put up walls, protecting ourselves. 

As I sat around me in a group of people listening to different voices call out what a "hurt" had been in their lives, something suddenly changed about the room. Instead of everybody seeing each other outwardly, we were all hearing and seeing each other's hearts, each other's wounds, and we all felt the nagging pain that we  couldn't seem to make go away. I was taken aback by the intensity of the pain all around me and felt like for the first time, some of the people in the group of people I was with, were able to say things that they had  never even spoken out. Now, the problem with not speaking out your pain, is that leaves you feeling isolated, alone in your thoughts and hopeless in your life. Where was I in all of this? Well, at first a little shocked that people would speak such things out, then a little afraid that I might be feeling some of the same ways and then so fearful that if I admitted it, somebody, somewhere would feel let down by my "weakness."

Even though nobody that I knew was there, I was afraid that if somebody found out how I felt, I would be "feasted upon" as soon as I opened up my heart. Now this was a great place for me to sit for my enemy.  I felt like I was on hamster wheel too weak to make it go and too full of fear to get off.

Love broke through all of my fear.

That is why, by Sunday of the workshop, a group full of people that hadn't met on Thursday, somehow found the depth of "Jesus" that I had never seen before. The Love that everybody pours out on one another, makes the pride, fear, unbelief and anger leave. Because suddenly, when there is a room full of believers standing together in unity saying, "I am with you," "I am here for you," "I believe Jesus can make all things new," and when they come around and gather and pray for you, something intensely wonderful happens. There really is very little battle in that environment because it is so thick with the Love of Jesus that I would imagine the enemy cannot even see its way through.

 Jesus, the Messiah left us with a clear, very important mission. 

To love one another and to love Him. 

He knew that united and together, people can stand for much longer. 

United and together, others can see a BRIGHTER Light. 

United and together, darkness has no place. 

United and together, we get to bring Heaven to earth in a big way. 

United and together, the world becomes a more brilliantly, beautiful place.

So Love, Himself, cuts through the thickest of walls, comes into the deepest of pains, sits with the most broken-hearted and begs the question: knowing that someone else on this earth loves me, and that the God of the universe adores me, can I stand again?

The answer is always, YES.