How can I know that I love you, Lord?

methinkshe · May 25, 2015

I haven't posted on Worthy for a good while but I really wanted to share a recent experience in the hope that it will encourage one of Jesus' 'little flock' who may be wrestling with a similar challenge.

I recently was given the opportunity to help someone quite close to me (unsaved - as yet!) by purchasing a car for them (at quite considerable personal cost) on the basis of an anticipated insurance claim with which they hoped to repay my outlay.

Four years ago, this woman wrote off a car - drink driving - and ever since has been named by her sin. She is labelled an alcoholic. The Lord had been impressing on me the destructiveness of naming a person by their besetting sin - it leaves that person in a place of utter hopelessness. How hurtful and cruel it is to be labelled by one's besetting sin - it's as though one's identity and destiny has been forever changed so that one is so identified with one's sin as to be known by the sin instead of one's name, never mind any decent character trait.

Then this opportunity arose for me to buy a car on her behalf while she waited for settlement of her insurance claim. The means by which the car came to my notice can only be described as "providential", if one is a Christian, although others might talk of coincidence. It is a beautiful car - not any old banger - a really, lovely car. Ten years old but in perfect condition. She loved it and instinctively felt that it was "too good for her" and that she "didn't deserve it" and didn't think it could or should be hers, even though it lit a small candle of hope in her heart that her life could change. I made clear to her that it was all of the Lord's doing, none of mine.

It was such a good buy that I could probably have put it back up for sale and realised a 20% profit within days. In any event, I bought the car with the intention of passing it on to her at cost price as soon as she received her insurance payout. But then I started to have doubts as to whether I was doing the right thing.

I took counsel from Christians and also non-Christian relatives and there was a very distinct difference in the advice they offered. The non-Christians advocated not only that I would be foolish not to realise a 20% profit by reselling the car, but even more foolish to pass it on to a labelled alcoholic, even though I explained that my intent was to give hope where hope had been lost. I had believed from the beginning that I was merely the Lord's instrument in delivering to her an outrageously extravagant, providential gift from the Lord as a very tangible demonstration of His love for her. The Christians I spoke to understood and agreed. In contrast, the non-Christians advised that to give a labelled alcoholic access to such a lovely vehicle would be sheer stupidity on my part. Not only was she undeserving, she would inevitably wreck it. The label had well and truly stuck - she was a hopeless case, unworthy of anything lovely. Hopeless, helpless and unhelpable. Unredeemable, in a word.

I pondered and prayed over this conflicting advice for several days and finally, when I resolved to make the car available to her, which was my reason for buying the car in the first instance, but also knowing that I would take a load of flack from the non-Christians who had offered their advice, I was filled with an explosion of overwhelming love that I hadn't experienced in such fullness since my conversion 40 years ago. At that time, I had received such a fullness of love that it was as though I was seeing the world in colour instead of black and white; I had felt this overwhelming love for everyone - every person on the street seemed to be of infinite worth and deserving of utmost compassion and love. But over the years the intensity had faded. But I got a taste of it again when I resolved to "show love to the unlovely", and act against worldly wisdom.

I wanted to record the experience so I wrote the following verses so I wouldn't forget the blessing I experienced when I chose to "love the unlovely" as God has loved me.

I hope it may be of encouragement to someone here.

Blessings to all my dear brothers and sisters in Jesus, where ever you are in the world.

Musings on I John 4:19 and Matthew 5:44

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;