I’m
ready to admit it, I like Tamar Braxton!
I watch the show; listened to the new single...I’m sorry, Lord, forgive
your child (LOL).
Seriously,
listening to her song Love and War
did get me to thinking. I didn’t have a
huge spiritual epiphany but the song title, coupled with a conversation that
I’d had earlier did prompt this thought—we generally only fight the hardest,
longest or the most about whom or with those we love the deepest. I’m telling you, NO ONE
can make me as angry as my husband. But by the same token, he also holds the
record for making the happiest (don’t tell my daddy).
When
I think about my relationship with God over the years, it’s been a bit of a
“Love and War” situation. I know that God
loves me with an unmerited, undeserved love.
I’ve done nothing to warrant His love for me and yet I receive it. Scripture tells us in Romans 5:8—“But God shows His
love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In
fact, there are times when I know that He should just throw me away but, His
grace invites me right back into His loving arms. It’s kind of like a mother and her
child. As parents, we give our children
advice, guidance, warnings, spankings, punishments but at the end of all of
that—there is always love. Because we
want what is best for our children, we are constantly cajoling them to do what
is right. I submit, as a mom of
teenagers, that the teen years are absolutely the “Love and War” years but, I
digress (I do that a lot).
I
have been married for nearly 17 years, and it hasn’t always been easy. In fact, there were days when I just wanted
to throw the towel in the ring and end the fight altogether. It wasn’t worth it…the arguing, the cursing,
the screaming, and the “cold wars.” Oh
yes, beloved, I have said some ungodly things in the heat of an argument! Many days I would have liked to pack up my
babies and hightail it out of there. But
it wasn’t God’s will for my life.
In
relationships, there will almost certainly always be a push and pull—a test of
the will, if I may, where compromise is inevitable. That is the nature of human
relationship. And so it is with our
relationship with Christ. Our human minds
find it difficult to believe that God can love us despite our ways. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” And we tend to view ourselves in light of
that wickedness and not in the light of God’s love--thus the “push and pull” of
love and war. God isn’t at war with us;
however, it is our sin nature that we war against. I contend that until we submit fully to God’s
love and His will for our lives, we will be like children who are determined to
have their way—often lost, confused without purpose or a plan and headed for
certain destruction; fighting a war we have no chance of winning. Today, why not hoist up the white flag and
surrender to God’s plan for your life.
With every breath that we breathe, Jesus is keenly aware of every fleshly
desire, every hurting place, every burden and every wound. He’s not avoiding us, He’s waiting…why not
surrender.
Let’s Pray:
Father, I confess that I am often at
war with my flesh because of what it desires.
At times, I am consumed by the darkness of my humanness and
self-centeredness. Help me to find you
in the aftermath of this self-inflicted war.
And Father in Heaven, I thank you for loving me enough to wait patiently
for me to find my way back to You.
In Your Son’s name,
Amen.
