Perfect Love

Which sentence do you like better?

1. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the fluffy, white puppy went frolicking through the field of yellow flowers with a big, elated grin on his furry face!

2. The sky was a dreary gray, and the ugly, brown rock sat in the gritty dirt with no expression, because rocks don’t have faces.

I’m gonna guess that 95% of you said that you are more of a fan of Sentence 1. The other 5% of you are sad little party-poopers. But in general, I think we all love hearing good news over bad news, happy stories over sad stories, funny jokes over not funny jokes, fun plans over boring plans, compliments over critiques, etc. All of those “first choices” have one thing in common = positivity! We like hearing positive comments, or things that make us feel good about ourselves. Funny jokes may not make us feel good about ourselves, but it makes us feel giddy inside when we’re laughing until our side hurts. Everybody likes feeling happy!

The same rule applies when we are reading scripture. We would rather read verses about how God is going to love us no matter what, but we would rather avoid the verses about punishment for our sins. I’m gonna be referring to Psalm 89 in this post… let’s look at verse 22.

“The enemy will not get the better of him; the wicked will not oppress him.”

-Psalm 89:22 (NIV)

That’s awesome, right? The enemy won’t get the better of us, we will stand strong with God on our side! But here’s some food for thought: Have you ever thought about yourself being the enemy? What if you are the wicked one? That thought hit me smack dab in the face the other night, and I got scared! I’ve GOT to make sure I don’t do anything to make myself a spiritual enemy of someone else!

Exactly.

We can’t just read those “happy verses” and assume that we can just sit back, sing some songs, and let God do his thing... and we’ll be alright. God is MORE than capable of that. Literally, He has moved mountains. But, He wants the best of us, He wants to work WITH us. If I don’t understand a math problem on Virtual School, I know I can take a little hike up the stairs to the math hall, and any of those teachers will help me until I can do the problem. (It actually took five of us to solve one problem at the beginning of the semester… it was written wrong.) Anyway, that’s how our Lord is! “Rabbi” literally means “teacher,” He wants to work with us!

We have to do our part. To do that, we have to read the not-so-happy verses, too. But let’s be honest: without bad news, we wouldn’t know what good news was. Without lame jokes, we wouldn’t know what “funny” was. Without Hell, we wouldn’t know the magnitude of Heaven. Without the verses about what will happen if we sin, we won’t know that the feel-good verses are rewards.

Back to Psalm 89. I was reading where the writer was talking about what God said about David, and I found a passage that describes the entire point of this blog:

“If his sons forsake my law

and do not follow my statutes,

if they violate my decrees

and fail to keep my commands,

I will punish their sin with the rod,

their iniquity with flogging;....”

-Psalm 89:30-32 (NIV)

WOAH. WHAT. Flogging?! That’s a little harsh, right?! This is one of those verses. I would rather not read that. But wait - let’s read the rest...

“….but I will not take my love from him,

nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.”

-Psalm 89:33 (NIV)

We had to read the bad to get to the good. He will never take away His love from us, either! God’s love will never fail, and He will never leave us. Even if we fail Him daily (and oh, guess what? I know I do!), he won’t stop loving. He will punish us, but it’s because it’s what’s best for US. He will do what it takes to help us. He does this because He is our Rabbi!

We have to take the bad to know how GOOD the good is, and that’s exactly what our God does! This is our awesome God’s love. He has a perfect love for us!