At the end of the day, love isn't everything its advertised it to be. Yes, love can be amazing. It can refresh us. It can light our soul on fire. In the movie, Shall We Dance, Beverly Clark says, "... we need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet. . . What does any one life really mean? But in a marriage [when you are in love], you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. You're life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness."
BTW, social media is a terrible substitute for True Love! We don't do "alone" very well and so social media is a way we cope--we post the good, bad, terrible, and mundane all the time, every day hoping someone notices. True Love is when somebody does notice, and does care, and you begin to share life your together. When you're loved you don't have to broadcast yourself nearly as much! You can cut back the status updates! So that's the upside of love, that's the dream. Two standing together, sharing their lives, noticing one another, bearing witness to one another.
But loving a fellow human being is hard work. Opening yourself to another person is risky business, it can cost you everything. Love can drain every last ounce of life from your bones. When things go bad (and they sometimes do)... love can leave you feeling battered/bruised, terrifically vulnerable, or even a bit jaded. For every fairy tale love story, there is just as likely to be a sad tale of betrayal/loss, or worse... rejection.
One level of rejection is never being friended in the first place (and I don't just mean on Facebook). Maybe you've put yourself out there for friendship through the years, only to face continual rejection. Maybe you say to yourself, "Nobody seems to like me." Another level of rejection is unfriending. A relationship ends--a person moves away, your interests change,... they get busy with college, career, marriage, child-rearing, and soon the friendship fizzles. Another level of rejection is separation. The relationship is just not working, so you agree to part ways. Another level is divorce.
For some, the prospect of loving again, especially after feeling burned, can be terribly frightening. Its easy, and seems wise, to build up walls of protection to keep ourselves from ever being hurt again. It seems wise holding people at arm's length, not letting them get too close. But as we know, the walls we build for protection can become a kind of self-made prison, and our cynicism, a kind of slow, merciless death.
As part of our True Love series, I thought it fitting to visit the question, "How can we learn to love again? How can we learn to trust again?" One of my favorite books (Leadership on the Line) refers to this as "maintaining a sacred heart." It's the art of holding onto your innocence, your curiosity, your compassion. It's refusing to let cynicism, arrogance, or callousness suffocate your aliveness.
There are many ways to maintain a sacred heart--but this morning I want to talk about the most important way I know how. THE most important KEY to learning to love again is forgiveness. Without forgiveness, love is as best elusive and at worse, unattainable.
Love Requires Receiving Forgiveness.
I cannot think of anything more critically necessary for relational healing than receiving forgiveness. And by forgiveness, I mean God's mercy and grace. Grace is like rain. When your soil has been trampled on, it takes moisture, light, nutrients, and careful cultivation to bring it back to place of tenderness, receptivity, and health. Without God's mercy and grace, our soil remains hard and unable to produce anything life-giving. But with God's grace comes endless possibilities and hope.
The way we learn to love again is by saturating ourselves in God's grace. When we've been hurt we imagine ourselves to be righteous, and everyone else the offender. We imagine that it is they who need grace, not us. But that is not the reality. Time and again the Bible drives home the simple truth that we ALL need mercy and grace, and that none of us are exempt from this need.
Our headspace ought to be one of total praise. I read Ephesians 1, and that is what I see. God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world. In love, God predestined us to be adopted as his sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. God has chosen to act according to his pleasure and will. God has chosen to freely give us redemption through Christ's blood, the forgiveness of our sins--grace he has "lavished" on us.
Ephesians 2:6-10 says, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
We're well on our way to healing when the sheer magnitude of all God has done for us in Christ and our profound undeservedness (I made that word up)... so overwhelms our soul it eclipses whatever wrongs others have committed against us. We've been lavished with "incomparable riches" expressed in God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Abounding mercy. Abounding grace. Infinite love.
Paul prays we can grasp "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ... so that we'd be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:18-19).
This is a different kind of headspace. It's the headspace of praise! Not filled with anger, rage, vindictiveness, cyncicism, arrogance, pride... but filled with love, gratitude, thanksgiving. Before God tells us not to be angry he tells us how much were loved. Before he asks us to release our injustices to him, he tell us how his Son Jesus suffered unjustly for our sins, died for our sins, and now offers us total forgiveness by faith.
Our obsession ought not be seeing that others get what they deserve. First and foremost, it ought to be that we've received mercy, grace "we" didn't deserve.
Love Requires Extending Forgiveness.
Relationships come down to what we most trust to bring about good. Your behavior reflects what you most trust. Most people trust evil more than goodness. When we're wronged we immediately default to speaking falsehoods about a person. In our anger we sin. We let the sun go down on our anger day after day, week after week, for years. We let unwholesome talk spew from our lips. We tear apart the humanity of our adversaries. All day long we're filled with bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, and malice. Our thinking is that if we can keep escalating the rage... we can what? Win our enemies over? Yea right! It's laughable.
Another option is to put our trust in goodness itself. Again, our behavior reflects what we most trust--whether God's way, or our way. So what happens if I become imitators of God? What happens if I let God's spirit renew me in the attitude of my mind? What if I put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness? What if I speak truthfully about things? What if I seek to resolve things quickly? What if I don't let the devil get a greater foothold? What if I work to be kind, and compassionate, to show empathy and understanding, to seek first to listen? What if I forgive just as in Christ God forgave me? What if I endeavor to live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God?
What is the track record of evil, in regard to improving relationships? What is the track record of goodness, in regard to improving relationships? What is the track record of hate and un-forgiveness? What is the track record of mercy and grace?
On the cross, God through his trust behind mercy and grace. "Father forgive them, they don't know what they do." Romans 2:4 asks, "... do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?" The choice is trusting our kind of contempt, or extending God's kind of forgiveness.
Love Requires Living in Forgiveness.
I don't think forgiveness is something we ever move beyond. . . I see it as something we must live more deeply into. The more you come to love a person, the more you will have to shower them with grace, not the less. Grace forms the basis for every relationship we enjoy. Take away grace, and the relationship dies a slow death.
I think its important to evaluate whether we are living under God's grace and moving deeper into forgiveness. I came a across an article in Christianity Today by Lewis Smedes that can help us think practically about forgiveness. How can we know if we've truly forgiven someone?
First, we must acknowledge that forgiveness is the only truly redemptive response. There isn't a more redemptive, restorative response, than forgiveness.
Second, forgiveness requires three actions. #1. We surrender our right to get even and inflict suffering. #2 We rediscover the humanity of the other person. People are complex, confused, weak, fragile, fearful, impulsive, proud. But there humanity is more than the sum total of their wrongs. It's unfair to define their total value and personhood by any one thing. #3 We wish the wrongdoer well. We desire good for them. Instead of seeking harm, we exchange blessing for curse.
Third, forgiveness takes time. Lewis tells how, "before C.S. Lewis died, he said, "I think I have at last forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my youth. I had done it many times before, but this time I think I have really done it." Maybe, had [C.S. Lewis] lived longer, he would have had to do it again."
Fourth, forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting. In fact the more we try to forget the wrong, the more likely we are to remember! Smedes says when we forgive we "dethrone the memory; we refuse to let it control our lives. We detoxify the memory; we purge its poison from our souls."
Fifth, forgiveness ideally end in reconciliation. Sometimes people want to reunite with us. Sometimes they could care less about our grace. The reality is that for reunion to occur there has to be forgiveness. But there may also have to be accountability, restitution, otherwise they might just clobber us again. One thing forgiveness is not is a license for people to keep abusing us.
Last, forgiveness only comes naturally to the forgiven. Smedes says, "Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven. This is probably why Jesus taught us to pray: "Forgive us our debts, [but only] as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12). Jesus implies that it is unthinkable for a forgiven person to refuse to forgive. If we do refuse, he says later, we have no claim on God's forgiveness. But remember, he does not expect perfect forgiving; he is the only expert at it. We are poor duffers trying to treat others as he treats us." http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/december3/42.73.html?share=cnVGSyKsAOQe2INuKSw4cPtQoLyfrq89