Three Simple Words

The other night I was up at work and my friend Nancy sent me a simple IM…

God is Love.

Three simple words. Words that I’ve heard hundreds, probably thousands of times together. Three words that I often find myself anticipating a cheesy, cliché, surface level, health and wealth type statement, and I usually find myself tuning out what comes soon thereafter.  After all these three words are such a Sunday school answer, such a basic, simple, new to Christianity, feel good combination and I am so far superior in my intellect and theological studies.

You see, lately I have been spending a great deal of time wrestling over theology.  What exactly do I believe? Why exactly do I believe it? Do I believe merely what I’ve been taught and thus am simply a product of my church’s denominationalizing? Is Calvinism a false teaching or is Armianism or neither? Who is right and why do we battle each other as we do? All this came from my desire to preach the truth, and my fear that I could potentially become a heretic and not know the difference! (And then the next thing you know Mark Driscoll will be putting my name in with Rob Bell and Brian McLaren as heretics) So I have been consumed by the desire to figure out God.  (Theology is literally the study of theos (God) No matter where I’ve been; in the car, in bed at night, in class, at work, while eating, while sitting on the toilet, everywhere I have been trying to figure out God – and I have to admit, it has taken it’s toll. And through it all, I lost sight of God.  As I built my Tower of Babel to try and get everything figured out and establish my theologian side, I lost sight of God.

 In his book The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer wrote:

“As with everything good in human life, at the back of this receptivity is God. The sovereignty of God is here, and is felt even by those who have not placed particular stress upon it theologically.  The pious Michael Angelo confessed this in a sonnet:

               My unassisted heart is barren clay,  
               That of its native self can nothing feed:
               Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
               That quickens only where Thou sayest it may:
               Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way
               No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead. 

These words will repay study as the deep and serious testimony of a great Christian.

Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought.  It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty.  The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, “O Lord, Thou knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.”

Three simple words brought God back into view. God is Love. I thought about what that meant to me. That in the midst of all my chaos and searching and analyzing and seeking and wrestling and debating with trying to study God, I forgot that the heart of my study should bring me to God and His Love.  Not a denomination.  Not a final conclusion.  Not a perfection of understanding.  But rather just as Love is unexplainable and a mystery, so too is God, and I need to embrace that and become like Him.

So instead of letting my desire for knowing all answer to all the questions that could potentially be asked, today I am just basking in the glory of God’s Love which what I do understand about it, I am able to show Love to my wife, to my girls, and although I struggle occasionally to show Love to my neighbor, and regularly to those I would call my enemies, at the core I know I can show them all Love.  Because God Loves me.  Because He has, does and will continue to Love me and you, all of us…I believe that I too can. 

So Lord, thou knowest all.  And I know so little.
Thank you for letting me know Love.