Worthy part 2
You are worthy of love. Not because of anything you've done, or anything you haven't done, or anything you're going to do, or not do. You are worthy of love because you are a human being. Period. And, according to Paul's writing in Romans, there is NOTHING that can separate you from the love of Christ. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you less. And there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more. Not let me explain, because this is completely true of how I feel about my son, Logan. He's my son. And that means I love him with everything I have and everything I am (that's my definition of love, by the way). But. Having said all that... what you do matters. Actions have consequences. When Logan does something I don't like... I don't like it. But that doesn't change the way I feel about him. I still love him with all my heart. And I make sure he knows that. Because its so easy for us to use our own actions to disqualify ourselves from experiencing the gift we've been given. One of the most heartbreaking conversations I've ever had is with someone that I care deeply about telling me, "I've already messed up so much I know I'm going to hell. So what does it matter anyway?" Literally broke my heart. And not only because that's such an awful, perverted, twisted, ridiculous "gospel" that we present to people... but because someone I care about was hopeless. Its like those blasted flower petals where we pluck them... "He loves me, He loves me not," and just hope and pray we land on "He loves me." But really we have resigned ourselves to, "He loves me not." We've let our deeds define us. Specifically our "bad" deeds. We convince ourselves that we are NOT worthy of love. And then we settle for much less than we "deserve." We look for love in all the wrong places, and we find something that might kind of sort of resemble "love" and we grab it because we think its as good as it gets. We think something is better than nothing. We accept the "love" we think we deserve. But from that incorrect point of view--the one where we think we're on the "highway to hell" because we're "bad to the bone"--we don't think we deserve anything. We don't think we're worthy of love. And then (and this is the most tragic part) when we DO actually encouter the real thing, we can't handle it. We don't trust it. We push it away because it seems too good to true. We rob ourselves of the gift we've been given because we can't believe someone would give us something so good. But the truth of the matter is, God's love is not too good to be true. It is so good that it MUST be true. Because it is literally THE TRUTH. The ultimate truth of the universe: God is love and He loves you. No matter what. All of the time. Because love isn't just what God does... love is who God is. In order for God to stop loving you He would have to stop being God. And even if that COULD happen, it wouldn't. You were created for the express purpose of the God who is love loving you. You ARE His expression. His love letter to the world. Even when you're at your worst. Because good, bad, ugly, God loves you. He created you so that He could have something to love. And so that you could love Him by loving others with that same point. That, to me, is the only thing that makes life worth living. A life of being loved and loving others is a worthy life...