All You Need Is Love....

So this morning I have had the Beatles song..."all you need is love. all you need is love. all you need is love, love. love is all you need." Oddly enough I haven't heard that song in forever but love is something that has turned my world upside down in the last couple of weeks. Before you get too excited...no I have not found the love of my life! It's because the Lord has been revealing some truths to me about love. I will give you a warning that this might be a weighty blog because this morning because I find my heart broken and just need to process somewhere. I'm not writing to throw myself a pity party or manipulate people into feeling sorry for me.

For those of you who know me...you know my story. The last 12 years have not been the easiest of my life. My family was rocked by the reality of divorce and the overflow of that has led to the most hurtful and lonely days of my life. I thought that only small children could get caught up in the ugly bitterness of a parents divorce and yet as an adult I find myself more in the middle, drowning in the ugliness and have come to realize that because I am an adult there was no attempt to shield me from the mess that unfolded. It has taken me a long time to realize just how much this situation has impacted my life.

Fast forward 12 years from the divorce to this past few weeks. I had the opportunity to attend Passion 2012 which is a huge conference for college students in Atlanta, GA. I have always heard amazing things about Passion and I was so excited to go. As I sat through sessions 1 and 2 where Louie Giglio and Beth Moore spoke the Lord was stirring something in me. Louie talked through a passage in Luke where Jesus was on his way somewhere and he intersected a funeral procession. Though this was not on his agenda for the day it certainly was no accident. Welcoming the interruption Jesus did what only Jesus can do...He raised the dead to life. The whole session was about how Jesus is intersecting some of our own funeral processions...not literally or physically but our spiritual deaths. He threw out a few examples of what could be leading to our deaths spiritually and it was the usual--drugs, alcohol, pornography--but then he hit on something I have never thought about before. His last suggestion was that maybe we were on our way to death because of our own misunderstanding of who God really is and that what we have is merely just a form of godliness. In short, if we have the wrong view of who God is, what we have is not salvation but idoltry of a god who doesn't exist. And for some reason this resonated with me.

The next morning Beth Moore spoke and I had my journal and pen in hand ready to learn, listen and absorb all she had to share. She really is quite a phenomenal woman who preaches (yes I said a woman WHO PREACHES) God's word with authority and power. And she picked up with where Louie left off in Luke and started in chapter 8. It's a story we've all heard but don't really study because of it's content. It's about when Jesus was on his way to raise Jairus' daughter from the dead and as he is on his way he is touched in a crowd by a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. Truth...if I had been on my period for 12 years I would have already taken matters into my own hands and put myself out of my misery. But here is this woman, who was unclean and not allowed to be in public, pushing her way through a crowd making all those she touched unclean just to touch the hem of Jesus' robe. And in doing so she was healed. But the woman did not go unnoticed because Jesus felt the healing power leave his body and wanted to know who touched Him. Just a couple of things I want to point out in this story (Beth's observations not mine):
1. This story again came as an interuption to Jesus and yet he was not depleted of his power in healing this woman to continue on to Jairus' home to raise his 12 year old daughter from the dead
2. When we receive healing and wholeness from Jesus he feels it too. He knew someone had touched him in faith.
3. we cannot be hidden from God. The woman could not go unnoticed and neither can we.
Beth shared this passage to drive home this main point...our greatest need for healing is usually in the area of our lives that is most private. And again this resonated with me.

To make a long story short I have felt like something has been holding me back for some time in my relationship with Christ. For the last few years I had it tagged has the failure and shame of losing my job as LSU but as I sat through this session I knew that wasn't it. Jesus and I have dealt with that issue and I have truly healed from that hurt and shame, accepted responsibility and the consequences for my actions and have moved on. But what is it still holding me back? So this was my prayer...Lord show me what it is and know that I am ready to be healed even if embracing more hurt has to come first.

Within days of uttering that prayer in the stillness and quiet of my soul the Lord was faithful to show me. Because of my circumstances which aren't crucial for you to know I had whole heartedly believed the lie that I am not worth loving. Deep down in the most intimate part of my soul I had to face the truth that I have really believed this and only then were my eyes opened to just how much this has affected every part of my life. I was living out that lie by believing God couldn't really love me. If the people who are suppose to love me the most on this earth can make their love so conditional how could God really love me. That bled over into my relationships with friends....when this lie festers I began to sabotage friendships unknowingly. Even my battle with my weight has been impacted by this lie. I have unconsciously sabotaged my own weight over the years so that I had a reason (obesity) to point to of why no guy could ever love me. And the reality of how toxic this had become in every facet of my life was hitting me like a ton of bricks. And this is where a line I wrote down in my journal from Beth's message really began to sink in...
"if we find ourselves in a toxic cycle of defeat it is because we have forgotten that we have been cleansed."

Someone recently told me that I would have to answer to God for my life and in all honesty they meant it to hurt me, to scare me, to manipulate me. But the thought of standing before a God I have come to rightly understand doesn't frighten me. Why should I fear someone who loves me unconditionally, who knows how much I screw up and knows the darkest secrets I could keep? The Bible says that perfect love cast out all fear and so I embrace looking into the face of Love, God is love! And as I have processed through that this is what keeps coming back to my mind as I seek to really know true love maybe for the first time in my life...

"Love is PATIENT and KIND. Love is NOT JEALOUS or boastful or proud or rude. IT DOES NOT DEMAND ITS OWN WAY. It is not IRRITABLE, and it keeps no record of being WRONGED. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices when the truth wins out. Love NEVER GIVES UP, never loses faith, is always HOPEFUL, and ENDURES EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE.....
All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever--faith, hope and love--and the greatest of these is love."
exerts from I Corinthians 13 and then Chapter 14 verse 1 says this...

"LET LOVE BE YOUR HIGHEST GOAL!"

Sorry for the the really long post and for maybe being a little more transparent than some of you are comfortable with but I pray that someone reading this needed to hear some little part of what the Lord has been teaching me lately. If nothing else you know how best to be praying for me if you are willing.

all you need is love. all you need is love. all you need is love, love. love (GOD) is all you need. love is all you need.