Learning to Love...

God has been teaching me a lot about the refining fire at the moment. About being completely surrendered to his will and allowing him to remove the old and dead and replace it with the new and alive.

Walking out this journey living with the poor and the broken is refining me. Its waking me up. Its making me alive. But if I'm honest it hurts. It hurts like hell. Its not easy. It doesn’t smell like roses and it certainly doesn’t look like them. Everyday here can feel like frustration, like hopelessness, like death, like pain, like darkness. Opening your heart to a people that is dying and vulnerable hurts. It is terrifying. Its like shooting yourself in the foot. You know that by loving them with everything your going to get hurt. Their lives are going to change yours. It would be impossible for them not too. Because of this its so easy to shut your heart down, to walk away and not look back. To want to escape.

That’s what I'm walking out at the moment. Learning to love with no regard for myself. Completely unafraid and exposed. How do I get there? That is my deepest cry at the moment. Jesus show me. And he points me to the cross. It’s the ultimate sacrifice. It’s the answer to my greatest question. Its all there is. What other example do I need? What else do I need to learn if I know this? Even more than that if I feel it. Its that simple. He loved me so much that he gave his life. He gave it all. Not just a little but everything. Holding nothing back for himself. He loved me to the end of himself. So why wouldn’t I do the same? My cry is that God would break my heart for this people so much that I cant help but love them to the end of myself.

Once I fully understand what Jesus did, that’s when I'm going to get it. When I understand the price he paid that’s when I will feel it. Foremost its about me. To him its about me, its about my heart, its about me loving out of a place of love rather than responsibility. He wants me to know, he wants me to feel, to experience a love that so changes me to the very core that I cant help but not give up until I have loved like he does. Often broken and bleeding, but loving. And that’s the hard thing. Will I ever really understand? Probably not. But Jesus is gracious and patient enough to let me try. To let me learn how to love like him. And I know its likely to not be perfect. After all learning makes mistakes. But that doesn’t mean we should give up. It means we should keep going until we get it right, or at least close.