Letting Love shape our lives: how can Love transform us?

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
          For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
          That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

             –William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

We all have our struggles. A person fighting a life-long addiction to drugs and alcohol is no worse than a person fighting a life-long addiction to jealousy and criticism. One takes over the body while the other takes over the spirit. But how many of these issues could be resolved if we released the floodgate of God’s Love in our lives?

Perhaps, like the The Two Towers movie in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, all of the filth and straggling orcs of Isengard could be washed away with one dam break.

My dam started breaking about eight months ago.

The words that changed me

Well over a year had passed since my old identity had shattered and I’d gradually learned to live from my new one. I had learned to slow down, to listen to truth, and to just be.

Then I attended a special celebration of the Holy Spirit: the Feast of Pentecost. At this celebration, I heard a sermon where the Holy Spirit spoke these words through a Mr. Brown:

“How differently would we live our lives if we truly believed that God deeply loved us?

‘We would live our whole lives like we had already been given an ‘A.’

‘And we would treat everyone else like they had already been given an ‘A’ as well.”

I listened to those words, pondered them in my heart, and soon forgot about them.

Preparing for another adventure

I didn’t need to think too much about God’s love. I mean, I already knew He loved me, right? I was busy—busy with finals, putting on an end-of-the-year party for my Bible school students, and believing God to provide the money I still needed for my exciting summer plans.

I was going back to the Middle East.

Ever since I went in 2013, I had been dying to go back, but God didn’t give me permission to return until April 2015 when I bought my ticket to leave on May 27. I was thrilled. I already knew I loved the Middle East and teaching English, and I couldn’t wait to get out of my little world and stretch toward new horizons and new people—new people who weren’t narrow-minded and didn’t irritate me like some people in my little world.

Oh yes, I was going to be so good at loving people on the other side of the world.

The orcs still in Isengard

And I was pretty good, right? I still felt great waves of brokenness sometimes, but I was much more self-aware and this time I knew who I was and could live out of my identity.

But first, God spun me around and looked me in the eye:

“You have a problem with jealousy. A big problem.”

I squirmed. This was not new information. I had been battling this besetting sin most of my life and had made very little headway.

But it doesn’t matter too much, right? Jealousy only hurts me, not anybody else, right?

“Wrong. So wrong. Your jealousy is tearing up your friend.”

I looked around and saw it was true. One of my friends couldn’t take pleasure in certain things because she was afraid of how I would feel. She was afraid that I wouldn’t be happy for her.

And I realized that she was right.

Sin is ugly. It’s ugly because it eats you from the inside and turns you into a blind and ravenous monster, but it also turns on the people you care the most about and devours them too.

No sin is a victimless crime. Jealousy is no exception.

Thus confronted with my own ugliness, I looked at my life, both in the present and past. And I gave up on my battle against jealousy. I realized that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change myself, so I told God he was going to have to do it.

I also realized that I had only been asking God to neutralize my jealousy; I hadn’t actually given him faith to take me the extra mile and make me happy for a person. So I asked him to do that too. I cried, asked my friend and God to forgive me, and temporarily forgot the whole thing.

I boarded the plane for the Middle East fifteen days later.

Love shakes us up

Arriving back was like returning to a familiar honeymoon destination. Here I was. . .

• long flowing abayas brushed the ground
• calls to prayer sang hauntingly from well-lit minarets
• fresh chicken shwarma and biryani set my mouth watering
• rice clumped at my fingertips where it was normal to eat with my hands again
• searing hot wind tried to pry apart my hijab and prod me into a sweat in thirty seconds flat.

I had arrived in my second home.

But within twenty-four hours of landing, I got very sick. I still don’t know if it was dehydration or food poisoning, but I had a migraine and nausea and could barely get out of bed for three days; I couldn’t even keep water down for awhile. My sister threatened to take me to the hospital for an IV.

Yet, in the middle of tossing my achy body in the middle of the night, a wordless thought pressed all around me like a cloud. When I struggled to put it into words later, all I could come up with was, “Love,” and “Mr. Brown’s meeting.”

“How differently would we live our lives if we truly believed that God deeply loved us?”

Getting sick was not my idea of love. Yet somehow, I started wondering if being sick was the most loving thing that God could do for me.

Illness also triggered another emotion I never felt the last time I ventured to the Middle East: homesickness. But I didn’t just miss my home; I missed deep friendships that I had left on the other side of the ocean. As I got better and other American English teachers started to arrive, I asked God to give me another friend. Then I waited and almost forgot about it.

But God didn’t.

Searching for purpose

My adult English students

The summer activities started to pick up, and I began teaching and meeting new people, both American and Arab. Everything was just as I had remembered it, yet something was distinctly different about this trip. For one thing, I was less busy. I still loved teaching, but I taught only one class with four students for four days a week. This contrasted with my class of seventeen rowdy teenagers from two years ago.

I had to fight to keep my classes from getting boring.

With a more laid-back schedule, my purpose for being there also eluded me. Sure, I taught my little classes and visited many local people, but I felt like I was missing something.

Also, the dynamics among summer teachers were just plain different than they were two years before. This time, I didn’t get to see other girls too often because I taught at a center with mostly guys and rode to work with the same four guys every morning.

And yet, even these four guys were a gift. I could probably write a whole post about those five-minute early morning car rides to work. I would stuff myself into the back seat, clutching my briefcase and backpack. A cheery “good morning” always escaped my lips, despite my best efforts to stifle it. Usually I got a grunt or two for a reply. Then we were off, perhaps making a wrong turn or running a red light depending on the driver, and just as I settled in to respect the manly silence, one of them politely tried to make conversation.

“What did you do last night?”

And so I told them, raising my voice above the music, which ranged from Shania Twain (who they were scandalized I had never heard of) to Aladdin (who I had heard of). Then we arrived, and like stiff, out-of-tune accordions, we’d unfold ourselves from the car and stumble to the school where I would make copies and the guys would make coffee and turn into more respectable human beings.

God gave me the friends 
that I needed

Eventually, these guys became my friends. 

• One of them started calling me “Cookie Monster” when he couldn’t remember my real name. 
• One of them wished me an awesome day on a nauseating morning when I needed encouragement.  
• One of them lent me his guitar for a whole night.

However it happened, they were the friends I needed. Due to a pile of fear in my life, I had never made friends with guys very easily. Yet over the summer, God convicted me of not loving my brothers in Christ like fellow humans.

It was a summer of convictions.

Learning to trust and love

It was also a summer of trust. I faced regular headaches and physical issues that were highly unusual for me. I couldn’t keep my breakfasts down, so I started giving up on them and leaning on God completely to get me through the teaching mornings. Once, I taught for nearly half an hour feeling like I was about to throw up any minute.

Meanwhile, I struggled to love some of the Americans around me. It was easy to love local people because they didn’t have Jesus inside of them, but what excuse did these people have?

I started writing people off:

• someone was too cool
• someone laughed disrespectfully at local people
•  someone was a flirt
• someone seemed lukewarm toward God

And yet, these words kept coming back to me:

How differently would we live our lives if we truly believed that God deeply loved us?

We would live our whole lives like we had already been given an “A.”

And we would treat everyone else like they had already been given an “A” as well.

I shifted uncomfortably in my pride. Was I a judgmental person? No, of course not. I just had high standards. There’s nothing more annoying than people assuming that you’re judging them when you’re not.

Judged and found guilty

But God did things that would start to change everything.

First, he started showing me how wrong I was about people. He showed me that . . .

• the “cool” person was funny and down-to-earth
• the “disrespectful” person was extremely caring
• the “flirt” was genuinely kind to everybody
• the “lukewarm” could challenge my faith

Before the summer finished, God hit me right between the eyes with James 2:1:

 “My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?” (NLT)

How can we claim that we believe in Jesus as long as we are judging or playing favorites, even with personality types? If we truly believe in the gospel, if we truly believe that Jesus died to save every person, how can we prefer some people over others?

“How differently would we live our lives if we truly believed that God deeply loved us?

We would show that same extravagant love to everyone equally.

I finally recognized that I was a judgmental person who desperately needed God’s help.

Dam break

Like I said, it was a summer of convictions. But it was also a summer of dam breaks.

Through every conviction, I sensed God’s hope and love. This wasn’t the voice of the Enemy that I had been attuned to for so long. The old voice was faint, while this voice spoke love, love, love, as it had all along.

“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” (Rev. 3:19)

And in the midst of all the correction, God did something that he didn’t have to do: he answered my prayer for a friend. She dropped into my world like a bomb ablaze and ready to explode. Redheaded, frank, discerning, and unafraid to say what she thought about anything and anybody—yet careful never to say anything unkind about people behind their backs.

She intimidated me. Probably I was afraid that if she got wind of all my faults, she would start telling me about them.

I avoided her.

But I lived in an apartment with her, so she was difficult to escape, and another girl who lived with us went back to the U.S. for a month so it was my sister and me alone with J.

Somehow, we became great friends.

• Maybe it happened when we both pressed on up a wadi to find a waterfall when other people were content to stop and go swimming.
• Maybe it happened when she snapped at me about something and then later apologized.
• Maybe it happened when she figured out things about me before I or my sister did.

However it happened, it happened. I started opening up to her about things that I had never felt comfortable talking about with anyone else, and she accepted me just the way I was.

Still, she didn’t stop being forthright and truthful. As we got closer, I waited for J’s hammer of truth to fall on my head and point out all the weaknesses I knew I had.

One night, the hammer fell.

She didn’t point out my weaknesses. She pointed out other things—good things I can’t repeat here. But I will never forget the tears in her eyes as she added, “I don’t think you realize it yet, but I hope one day God helps you to understand just how special you are.”

You are loved.

I am terrible at receiving compliments. I tend to brush them off and pretend that they don’t really mean anything, but something stopped me from doing that this time.

Take it. This is a gift from Me.

And so I opened my heart a little wider and let the Love flood in.

How differently would we live our lives if we truly believed that God deeply loved us?

Love gives us new eyes

Things didn’t change overnight. I still battled against the same old self then and still do now, but Love started taking over my thinking more and more so that I didn’t view the world the same way. 

I read about the generosity of God and saw that generous Love everywhere:

• in each majestic wave that rolled in on the beach in endless procession
• in the gift of new and old friendships
• in the adventure of an eleven hour layover in Zurich

I had been wanting to visit Switzerland since I was nine years old! God didn't have to send me that gift, but he did.

“Let your love, God, shape my life. . .” (Psalm 119:41, The Message)

I started seeing each event, good or bad, as the most loving thing that God could have done for me. Because, really, that’s the truth. If we truly believe that God loves us deeply, then even painful things are meant to draw us closer to his heart.

Love changes everything.

• Jealousy loses its hold because no matter what happens, we have Love and everything that the Giver of Love sees that we need.
• Fear melts because perfect Love casts out fear. Every time.
• Carnal judgment folds because Love sees everyone as a child of God who is irrevocably loved.
• Stress diminishes because Love is there and will carry us through. Always.

When we truly believe that God loves us deeply, we see the world through fresh eyes. 

• Every piece of nature is a love letter
• Every trial is a song 
• Every stranger is an opportunity

Love calls us out of prison

I started opening my gate

I also realized why I had struggled with being judgmental. I was my own worst critic, and I had held myself to such a high standard for so long that I was doing the same thing to everyone else.

That’s what happens when our hearts are buried behind fortresses and lava moats. We lock our hearts away, demand perfection of ourselves, and expect perfection from everyone else. Anyone who fails to meet this standard is a failure—including ourselves.

But Jesus has crossed every chasm and forded every moat. He is knocking on the gate and calling us out of our self-made prisons so that we can know him.

Love is a powerful flood

He is calling us out to love and be loved.

As I opened the gate of my fortress, the dam of Isengard cracked. Love burst outward, flooding the plain, extinguishing every lava moat, and sweeping me closer to the Source of this Love.

Receiving Love

We cannot give Love if we haven’t received it fully for ourselves. It’s like trying to exhale without inhaling first.

We cannot really know God until we know his Love, because God is Love. Trying to have one without the other is like trying to skin God alive. Love is the skin that God wears at all times. We cannot fully recognize God until we see his skin; they are inseparable.

People can only separate Love and God when they kill God first, which is what many people are trying to do today. The problem is that skin is only alive when it’s still attached to the body. Murder God and pilfer his love, and we’re left with flaky dead cells.

But God doesn’t offer us dead cells. The Love he offers is a living thing. It’s a part of himself. He will clothe us in this Love every day, if we’ll let him.

If we truly embrace this Love for ourselves and others, I guarantee it will shape us. It’s started shaping me. Yes, some days I feel burned out and I want to bite someone’s head off and crawl into a hole to keep my heart dry and safe. But when I unearth it, I remember the Love, and I let my heart saturate in it as I stretch out to offer the world the little that I have to offer.

This Love fortifies me and has left no area of my life untouched. 

• I can relax as I play my violin before a crowd because I am playing from a position of Love, not striving to please God or people.
• I can swallow my fear of heights and scale Mt. Washington because Love propels me onward.
• I can look at college finals and ESL teaching schedules with a smile because Love makes a way every time and provides plenty of opportunities to trust.
• I can offer hugs and encouragement to my hurting girls because the Source of Love provides an endless supply.
• I can walk down the street and see beautiful men and women everywhere—people that God has created and loves deeply. And I’m not quite so terrified to talk to them.

I went to the Middle East to escape my little world and the people in it. Ironically, God sent me to the other side of the world so that I could learn to love my neighbors back home more effectively. 

As I returned to the United States and resumed my position on staff at my Bible school, an unprecedented Love filled my heart for my students and fellow staff members. I no longer saw people who irritated me. I saw faithful followers whom God had already given an “A.”

But before we can experience transformation, we must receive that Love. If we close our eyes to the beauty around us, fill the vacuum of our lives with constant activity, or brush off the people who show us love every day, we block off the portals God is pouring his Love through.

We must listen and receive Love with our arms wide open. It is flowing constantly around us. It is up to us to remember it and let it in. Only then can Love shape our lives.