10.16.24

This week we are looking at the attribute of love. Our God is a loving God. But what we’ve seen is that his love is far deeper and far more profound than we typically imagine. Because we filter our concept of love through the lens of human love, our pictures of his love are far too small. And we assume that his love, like ours, can be strained and lost.

But his love is not based on attraction. It’s based on relationship. He designed us for the purpose of being in relational community with him. And even our rebellion can’t keep God from pursuing us in rescuing love.

As we saw yesterday, one aspect of his love is that of a Father to his children. Like a father, his love is far too nuanced for a child to fully understand. Today we see that his love is deeply involved - deeply invested in us - far more than we could ever imagine.

Because the love of God is relational and not attractional, he chooses to pursue us in love by identifying with us - by making himself vulnerable to us. We often think of God as disappointed with us when we fail. Maybe sitting on the porch tapping his foot, wondering when we are going to get our act together. But the picture that God paints with the parable of Hosea’s life is one in which he has so bound himself to us, that his heart breaks when we do foolish things. Chapter 11.8 tells us that God’s heart is coming apart because of our rebellion.

And this is why God had Hosea marry Gomer to illustrate this. We can all be called to befriend a broken woman like she was. We can invest our time and energy into her restoration. But at the end of the day, we get to go home to our own family. Because her problems are not our problems. But in a marriage, that’s not the case. You can’t go home from those problems. And her brokenness is your brokenness is your brokenness.

And what God is telling us here is that he has so bound up his love with us, that he cannot be fully joyful until we are fully restored to our joy in him. He’s telling us that his happiness suffers until we get to the place where our happiness is fully realized in him. The God that created the universe by the mere breath of his mouth, has so voluntarily bound himself to us, that he is held back from the fulness of life until we are restored and renewed in all the beauty that he designed us to be.

The New Testament author Jude gives us a beautiful picture of that with his ending benediction. He says, “To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy…”. And we have to ask, “Whose joy?” Well, it’s God’s! He is telling us once again that on the day when God finally gets to present you glorious and perfect, then - and only then - will his joy be complete and full!

If this is true, there is no way to relate to God like a renter (the way we normally do). We can’t presume his love ebbs and flows with our performance. But it’s a call to make ourselves as vulnerable to him as he has to us. It’s a love relationship where we can be honest about our failings. We can be vulnerable enough to admit when our hearts are drawn to lovers besides him. And we can experience from him his joyful healing as he longs to draw us back to himself.

Is your picture of God today a frustrated tapping foot - just waiting for you to get your act together? Or is he a Lover who pursues you with every passion of his being? Do you have a God who is so vulnerable in his love for you, that he has bound his heart with yours? This is what it means when we say, “God is love.”