Click to view: Surrendering to God ~ The Choice is Ours: Perfect Love or Almond Trail Mix Love (The Surrender Series, Part 5)
I love my cat and dog. I love my husband and children more.
I’d cry for my pets, but I’d die for my family.
And yet, my love for my family isn’t perfect, because I’m not perfect.
But, there’s One who’s not only perfect, but also did die for us.
Perfect love.
If we surrender to God, we’re surrendering to:
One who loves us with a perfect love.
“But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear Him, and His righteousness with their children’s children,”
~ Psalm 103:17“…you are precious to Me. You are honored, and I love you.”
~ Isaiah 43:4“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
~ John 3:16
God doesn’t just love us. He loves us perfectly.
Our minds can accept the logic that a perfect God loves perfectly, however…
That’s the rub, isn’t: The Big “HOWEVER.”
We may know in our minds that God loves us, however, it’s too easy to doubt His love when life hits hard.
The truth is that if we could see every situation as God sees it and could see the end from the beginning as He does, we’d do exactly the same as He did.
God’s love can feel terrifying at times, but it can always be trusted — and, oh, how that matters.
God lets big stuff smack us in the face at times that seems to prove His love can’t always be trusted, but we must never doubt in the dark what God has shown us in the light.
I remember reading about Teresa of Avila, a catholic nun who lived in the 1500’s. One day her horse bucked her off and sent her sailing. As she lay, sprawling and sore, she said, “Dear Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, it’s no wonder You have so few!”
I laugh, but I feel the same way at times.
God lets life buck us into a ditch, however His love never fails.
God loves us perfectly, thus we can trust Him even as we soar through the air having no idea where we’ll land or in what condition we’ll land in.
We can’t understand all His ways. They’re beyond our ability to comprehend at times. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
We want to understand, but we don’t need to; we only need to trust — despite our feelings.
Our feelings distort the facts and toss us into unbelief — the worst place to land.
Unbelief is where we’re prime to believe lies about God and stop following Him, wandering around at the mercy of our merciless feelings.
Let’s settle in our hearts once and for all the indisputable truth that God loves us perfectly. It changes our outlook on everything and gives God a willing vessel through which He can shower His blessings.
What could be better?
Surrendering to someone who doesn’t love with a perfect love?
Let’s see…
If we don’t surrender to God, we’ll surrender to
Someone who loves with an imperfect, selfish love, or something that can’t even love at all.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
~ Jeremiah 17:9“…there is no one who does good, not even one.”
~ Romans 3:12
I told you I love my husband, but sometimes he can get on my last nerve when he eats almonds in my presence.
I know. You can’t believe he does that either, right?
The crunching sound is sheer torture. You might as well just throw me into a room of chalkboards and scratch fingernails down them while you’re at it.
When Larry walks into the room with his hand cupped, I cringe. I know he’s holding a handful of almond trail mix, and the horrid crunching sound is seconds away from curling my toes.
Why must he consume almonds in the house? Is it really too much to ask of him to go outside and eat them in the woods?
If Larry surrendered to me and depended on my love to fulfill his every need, I think we’ve all seen that it would be a very poor choice indeed.
He can’t even eat a healthy snack in my presence without my perfect love disintegrating into grunts of unloving disapproval.
My love is Almond Trail Mix Love — a mixture of unconditional love and selfish human love. It’s not perfect.
We’re not going to find anyone on the planet who’ll love us perfectly. They can’t. They’re human.
Surrendering to anything that can’t love, like a career or dream, is possibly even more doomed to disappoint.
A career or dream can be exciting, but they’ll never fill our need for loving relationships.
Apart from God, any fulfillment we experience in our relationships, careers or dreams is fleeting, or elusive and frustrating.
We’ll enjoy wonderful moments of happiness, but happiness based on someone or something that’s not perfect will eventually fade or falter.
We should love others and our careers with joyful abandon, but fully surrender to God.
Does Surrendering to God Guarantee Love, Joy, and Happiness All the Time?
Yes and no.
Yes, we’re guaranteed God’s love, and the joy and happiness that comes from experiencing God’s love is guaranteed to be available to us all the time.
But no, feelings of love, joy, and happiness will not always outweigh the emotions we face as humans.
Anger, sadness, confusion, and anxiety are all part of the human experience. We won’t avoid them, but if we trust in God’s perfect love though them, we’ll bring Him glory and receive His blessings.
I hope we’re seeing that surrendering to One who is worthy and loves us with a perfect love just makes common sense.
I also hope you’ll join me for my next post as we look at more confirmation that surrendering to God is the smartest move we can make.
If you’ve missed any of the posts in The Surrender Series, click the link below (and then scroll down to get to the first post in the series):
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