Quest

I am starting to enjoy Buffalo more and more. I love going to the downtown area and hanging out down there. It's so pretty. It just has this neat feel to it. I love it.
I feel like it is a new season coming up. I feel more hopeful now about life and God. It's been tough. I've felt down for so long. But a new hope has risen.
Lately I have been praying for unadulterated love (God's love of course) and unadulterated Jesus. The way I view God's love is obviously tainted and so lately I have been praying that I could know God's love apart from people. I'll explain. In my life God's love is dictated by the way people respond to my actions or deeds. If I am doing a lot of good things and getting lots of praise then I feel really loved and like God is well pleased with me. If I am srewing up or not doing things right then I feel like God is mad at me and that he is withholding his love. Hello...that's a lie if I have ever heard one. Past experience has helped this tainted view flourish. But crushing time is here. God is not conditional. This is head knowledge right now but I feel like it is a quest that I am on to obtain this in my heart. I was reading this book called "Blue Like Jazz", the author struggles with recieving love from God, people, whoever. So he was dating this girl and she would always share with him her feelings for him. She would pour out her love and there was some wall there that he couldn't recieve it or something. Well she broke up with him because of this. He could recieve her love. One day he was cleaning his bathroom and he felt like God said, "Love your neighbor as yourself" Well the guy was like alright (why would God tell me this). He went on, you would never look at your neighbor and just bloody him with all of his screw ups. You wouldn't beat him up over every thing wrong with him. No you love your neighbor, you wouldn't dream of treating him or her that way. . . . . . so why do we so often treat ourselves that way. God does not withold his love. Nobody is above the love of God. Not even me. There is not one person that God choses to hate or to love conditionally. Never in history has there been a person that God decided to withhold his love from. I am not the first person nor will there ever be a first person to be hated by God. God's love is not in anyway connected to the things that I can do for him. His love is not bound by constraints. Lavish. Unadulterated. Wild. Rich. Abounding is his love. God isn't going to love me more because I just wrote "a great blog". God isn't going to love me more because I left on a church plant. God isn't going to love me more because I do the noble things. If I was injured in a car accident and made a vegetable for the rest of my life God would not withhold his love from me because I can't do things for him anymore.
So Lord expose us to unadulterated love. Help us to seek and yearn for that. Help me to chose the things of you out of YOUR love and out of who YOU are not because I will be praised for it. Heal my tainted views. Help me to know in my heart that you are not withholding your love from me. Help me to know in my heart that you are not disappointed in me but that you love me. Help everyone who feels this way and help me to know these things in my heart that I might help others like me and Lord thank you for new hope.

Amen