Love Experienced
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Unfeeling the Felt Need
Unfeeling the Felt Need
During the last six days, Kara and I had an opportunity to spend a week with our ministry partners in Pennsylvania. We went with a mission to help them assemble some training materials so we can start to teach people how to help traumatized people.
We were glad to see that a significant amount of progress had been made on the materials. My intended reason for being there was to walk through the material, listen to how it would be used, and pull these threads together into a cohesive process.
And that is exactly what happened, except there were these moments where I would ask some questions, and those times would turn into counseling sessions for me, and we would simply fellowship together and love each other through life.
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But, something started to stir in me, I was curious as to why others could so easily experience love, yet I was having such a hard time with that concept. At some point in my life I had learned to “Unfeel felt needs.”
Our culture is moving more and more in this direction. With the advent of social media, more than ever, a person is able to interact without really feeling anything for the other person, and they are able to sit and seethe in their emotions. They regulate by outburst against others. We have learned to unfeel the felt needs of ourselves and especially of others.
This is not how the roots of our faith started. When you read through the gospels you get the overwhelming sense that people connected with Jesus because he understood them. He felt their need. The writers of the New Testament tells us that Jesus is familiar with our grief and pain, that he experienced those himself.
Paul would go on to describe this in an amazing way when he wrote his letter to the church at Ephesus. Paul is having a moment of reflection when he is writing his letter, and it is striking what he has concluded. Let’s back up just a bit first.
Paul is explaining the plan of God to the Ephesians, and how they fit into this plan, in fact how all of us fit into this plan. Let’s pick up at this explaination
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And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News.
Does that sound like a good plan? Yes! Gentiles and Jews include all people in all nations. And everyone is equal, there is no one that is greater than or lesser than. You wonder where we get the concept that all are created equal. It comes from this Judeo/Christian background.
And together, we form this body, not exactly like a human body, but it serves as a good metaphor. What part of the body can you remove where you don’t feel it? It is all there for one reason or another. And Paul has figured out that he has been given what he calls a privilege of sharing this news. What a privilege too, left for dead, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and on and on.
But that is not what bothers him. I think he can live just fine with all of those bad moments. It is the really bad moments that stay in his memory. When he would stand around while others killed Jesus followers. When he would go and arrest Jews who were following Jesus, bring them back to Jerusalem so they could be “dealt with.”
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Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning.
He sees himself as the least deserving of all God’s people. Yet, God chose him to tell the Gentiles about these endless treasures found only in Jesus. And moreover, he was chosen to share this awesome plan of God with everyone.
Imagine, put yourself in his sandals, knowing what you did, yet still being chosen to tell the secret that God had kept hidden since the beginning. For you nerds, now you know why Paul had been given a “thorn in his side” to keep him humble.
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God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.
We don’t have time this morning to fully unpack this, but suffice it to say, the elohim, the unseen beings have mucked this whole thing up, and drew us into this quagmire. I think the plan of God to include humans in his family was too much for some of these other beings to handle. That is speculation, but at some point they rebelled. God decided to honor and glorify his human family above the unseen. And that has been his plan from the beginning, plan A, so to speak.
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Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence. So please don’t lose heart because of my trials here. I am suffering for you, so you should feel honored.
And because of that plan, because of what Jesus accomplished in his death and resurrection, we have this amazing privilege to come directly to Yahweh, into his presence. This is such a big deal. For Paul, someone who knew what it took to be in God’s presence, this was revolutionary. More than that, he is aware that others feel bad that he has gone through what he has, and in Paul’s mind, all the trials and suffering he goes through are worth it.
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When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.
And it is this thought, these amazing, hidden things that Paul is sharing with others that causes him to just stop, be humbled and pray. What does he pray for? Watch carefully.
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I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.
Think about this. Paul has given the privilege to understand this mystery. He has gone through trials and suffering because of it. It is worth it, and he turns and prays for the people. You would think he would pray that they would understand it too. But he does not.
He doesn’t have to, he just told them in the letter. Rather he wants them to link up with this inner strength through the Spirit of Christ. He wants them to know that Christ will make his home in their heart. He wants them to trust Jesus.
More than that, he wants them to grow really deep roots into God.
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Specifically, grow deep roots into God’s love. He could have picked from several words here, but he chooses God’s love. That is where Paul wants them to live. He wants them to live out of a heart of God’s love. But he is not done!
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And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Paul prays that we have the “power to understand.” It is an interesting translation. The original would be read to say, “to be strong enough.” Again, interesting choice of words. He wants us to embrace the concept that accepting and understanding God’s love takes strength and courage. And that can be true, simply because we have others and ourselves that are constantly saying “we are not worthy” of this love. That is must be earned. That we are not at the top of God’s mind, so to speak. It is a constant wrestling match in ourselves to embrace this love of God.
Notice there are four dimensions to this love of God. I like to think of this like a bathtub. You can measure the bathtub, height, width and length. But there is a fourth component. The water. And you don’t know what that is like until you get into the warm water and soak.
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May you “experience” the love of Christ. Again, using that bathtub analogy, you can know the dimensions, you can even know what the bathtub holds, you can write papers about it, you can preach about it, but you won’t know it until you experience it. And even then, our minds are not capable of fully understanding it.
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And it is only then that you will be made complete in all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. In other words, you can know all these things, do all these great works, but until you are utterly confused by the love of God, you will not understand.
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It is as if Paul is saying, “When you can’t explain it, then you understand it.”
It is what Paul said earlier, when he saw himself as the least deserving of all God’s people.
That is the moment he became aware of the love of God. It is why Paul would write that of all the things the Spirit offers, he considered Love to be the greatest gift of all. When he lists the “fruit” of the Spirit, he starts the list with Love.
Paul is saying, “we need to feel the felt need.”
The experience of Love from God can come in many forms, but the two most common are the ones just about all of us are familiar with.
You can be a recipient of God’s love, when others love you at the least deserving moment. Perhaps you have had this experience. When someone comes along and helps, hugs or hurts with you and you have nothing to give in return. It just comes unconditionally. People will just sit with you in love. Helping you, even if that help causes them trials or suffering. When that happens, and you are the receiver, you have experienced God’s love.
You can be a giver of God’s love, as in the same example. When you give, even to the point that is causes you trials and suffering, and it makes no sense, that is when you too experience the love of God. You become the conduit by which that love flows, and when that happens, you are soaking in the warm water of God’s love.
Instead of simply describing to a person what God’s love is like, you are showing them, you are living it. And that is what changes the world. That is what introduces people to the love of God. That is what sets them on a journey to becoming someone who can also become a conduit for God’s love.
It was this very kind of love that caused the church to grow. They had no power on earth. And that was on purpose. Do you remember the verses about God’s purpose was to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places? You see, when you bring the experience of the Love of God to humans, you are doing something that no angel or unseen being can do. Paul realized that bringing the experience of God’s love was not to get power here on earth, rather its purpose was intended for the heavenly places.
Yet, the effects on earth are obvious. When we do this, people notice. When we do this, evil notices too. We ask, when will God deal with evil? He already has, and he has left with us the task of loving one another in order to deal with the evil in unseen and seen places. Can you imagine how things would change if we were to stand strong in the Love of God towards others? I can, and it is a beautiful picture!