I don't know when it started. Maybe after seeing the heart and intentions of my Mother, aunt, and grandparents. They were a living example of faith and knowing who you are in Christ. But that purity is so attractive to me. It's one of my deepest desires.
A pure heart. I'm always chasing after this. I'm always asking God to help me see how to adapt to this heart he needs me to have to serve him. Purity is God's presence to me. So pure. It's like worship.
Worship is so pure to me because it's you dying to flesh and activating your spirit. It's you humbling yourself to the presence of your father. My favorite place to be.
This is the safest place to be. The purity of God will make you pray that the King of Kings intercedes on the troubles of people that inflict pain upon you. That purity will make you surrender your self-righteousness and righteous indignation after being done wrong by the ones you love the most. The purity of Christ, the perfection of Christ and the divinity that is the Lord lives within us.
You know what that means?
It means so much but to name a few things it means that since the Almighty and kinsman redeemer lives within me, that means I can overcome anything because he did. Death could not take him! That's amazing to me.
"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)
He saved me from me. He saved me from my own pride and self-righteousness. It only left me bitter, egotistical and mad at the world.
Jesus has that kind of purity where he was fully aware of the betrayal that was to come from the people that followed him. He knew the kisses of Judas were deceitful and yet he still broke bread with him. He was even able to address this with them and continue to remain loving towards them. This taught me that love is not a feeling.
Love is a decision. How I feel has nothing to do with it.
Can I be honest right quick?
I've been dealing with some of my own Judas's and God has been teaching how to love people that he told me were enemies. It has been so tough keeping up with the word he's been giving me.
The first thing I learned was that when it comes to loving the people that don't cover you, inflict pain upon you, neglect you, speak death or negativity over you and more that you must recognize that they're your neighbor as well. When people place labels on others outside of who they are as humans then it's easier to penalize them for wrongdoing and treat them in an inhumane way.
God taught me to really be on his toes while confused, offended, disappointed, broken, lost and more. Whatever he told me to do I was doing it the best way I knew how. I was "giving it what I got and then getting some sleep".
But what would happen internally to me when dealing with my neighbors that are difficult to love made me question everything. I made the mistake of practicing this love in order to see a change rather than to serve God. I was getting so frustrated by doing what God told me to do and then still not being treated how I knew I deserved but I was serving the wrong things. I was doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Have you ever felt this way?
I would wake up every day not knowing how the day would go. As soon as he would tell me what to do whether it was to pray for someone, write, reach out to someone or speak life to someone I was ready for whatever he wanted. But I constantly felt conflicted because once I had to endure the frustrations of dealing with people that take more patience to love, I would start internalizing everything.
I felt that warring within myself over being self-righteous about what happened in the past and practicing loving people anyway.
When it comes to learning lessons about love and semesters, these both had to be the toughest lessons and times I've experienced. Then, as I began to type this article God gave me a complete revelation about love.
Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision. Love has nothing to do with how I feel.
You decide to love someone. You decide how you love someone.
