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HE FIRST LOVED US
Psalm 1:1-3
1 John 4:7-19
September 6, 2009
They were married for over half a century, and as long as anyone could remember they had played their own special game. They would write the word Shmily (S-H-M-I-L-Y) in a surprise place for the other to find. One of them would leave the word somewhere, perhaps written in the dust on a table top. As soon as it was discovered it became the other ones turn to leave the word somewhere – Shmily. It might be in the dew on a morning window, or on a bathroom mirror so it appeared in the steam. Perhaps it was written on a piece of paper and stuffed inside a shoe, or traced in the ashes of the fireplace. Once, she unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper just so she could leave Shmily on the very last sheet.
It was more than just a flirtatious little game for them; it was a way of life – a life not without challenges. She had battled breast cancer. It had been forced into remission, but now it was back again. He stayed with her every step of the way; almost never leaving her alone. For the time, the game was suspended. And then, one day, she was gone.
He wasn’t sure if he had the will, or the energy, to keep on breathing; let alone live without her. On the day of the funeral he took his grandson’s hand and approached the altar. He began to smile, and then even laugh, when he saw it – there – in the floral arrangement. Shmily. Somehow, in one of the brief moments when she was alone, she had made a call to the florist. He read the questioning look in his grandson’s face, traced his hands across the letters, and said, “See How Much I Love You.” Even there, in his most powerful moment of grief, there was her love.
Don’t we all want a love that powerful, that compelling, and that complete? Don’t we all want to be not just the recipient, but also the giver of that kind of love? The problem is, we can’t give what we don’t have. When I was a child my parents often used the saying, ‘You can’t get blood from a turnip’. Typically they were talking about money issues – you can’t pay someone if you don’t have any money yourself. But, the idea was the same; we can’t give what we don’t have.
Many of you have been doing the Forty day Love Dare. You were probably wondering what was going on when it took an evangelistic turn last week. For several days the dare had nothing to do with your spouse. It was all about your relationship with God and your faith in Jesus. Here is why.
Our New Testament reading today makes it perfectly clear, love comes from God. We are only able to love because God loves us. Last week we talked about the attributes of God, and that it requires both male and female to represent those attributes. Love is an attribute of God that crosses the gender barrier. Whether male or female, we love because He first loved us. The more powerful our love relationship with Jesus, the more powerfully we can love another person. The less we accept the love of God, the less love we have to give – because we can’t give what we don’t have.
But Rocky, I know of atheists who love each other and don’t end up in divorce court. That’s true. We all know non-believers who have happy marriages. But, I will categorically deny that those marriages are of the same quality as the marriage of two practicing Christians. From a distance Cubic Zirconium and diamond appear the same. They both sparkle and shine. However, when you put them under high magnification there is no comparison in the quality. Diamond reflects thirty times more variation in color than Zirconium, and it reflects forty percent more light than Zirconium. It is brighter and it has a wider range of color than Zirconium. Then, there’s the real test. Pressure. A diamond can endure more than 1000 times the pressure of Zirconium. There will always be pressure on your marriage. And, there will always be outsiders struggling to see what you reflect. You want a diamond marriage; you don’t want to settle for lesser quality. You want a Christian marriage.
How do we cultivate a love relationship with God, so we can improve our love relationship with our spouse? There are two ways. The first is called General Revelation. The Apostle Paul says if you will just stop and look at a night sky, or a field of flowers, you must know that there is a God and that he is good (Romans 1:19-20). Or, every now and then you will have one of those God moments, when it is undeniable that God has just influenced the course of your life. Those times when we bump into the reality of God are called General Revelation. Unfortunately, General Revelation can only take us so far. After that we need Special Revelation. Special Revelation comes directly from God, it is without error or mistake, and is available for everyone to examine and discuss – it is the word of God; the Holy Bible. Special Revelation is how we cultivate a special love relationship with God. That showed up in your Forty day Love Dare as well, didn’t it; the encouragement to spend time in Scripture?
In our Old Testament reading today we were promised strength if we would embrace the word of God. Not just any kind of strength, but the strength of endurance – the power to survive the strongest storms. Every marriage is going to face storms. I don’t care how much you love your spouse. Every marriage is going to face storms. Don’t you want that promise of endurance? Don’t you want to survive the storms? Then embrace the word of God. The Psalm also promises prosperity if we will embrace the word of God. It’s not talking about money; it’s talking about quality of life. Don’t you want your marriage to do more than just survive? Don’t you also want it to thrive? Then embrace the word of God.
Most Christians feel pretty good about the time they spend with the Bible. And yet, the average American Christian spends ten minutes a day involved with Scripture, but four hours a day involved with television. If that’s the case, which one is teaching us about love, and what is it telling us? Now, I am not going to vilify television as the consummate evil. But, if you’re not grounded in the word of God, you don’t know when you’re being led astray; you don’t know when your endurance and prosperity are being stolen.
If we spend time in the Bible learning to love God, and receive God’s love, here is something that pops right out at us. We started out in a Garden, in the presence of God, surrounded by perfect love. But, we bought into a lie; the lie that we could be just like God (Genesis 3:5). We brought sin into the world, and along with sin came an unending cascade of destructive behaviors. Favoritism arrives. Lying arrives. Adultery arrives. Those are all behaviors that destroy relationships and isolate us as individuals.
We began to lose our significance. We embraced humanism – if God doesn’t want me in the Garden then I don’t want God in my life. After all, I’m a really good person just the way I am. We became enlightened – there probably isn’t a God anyway. I can’t see, taste, or smell God; so he probably doesn’t exist. (Of course, that’s based on the flawed premise that you are more powerful than God to begin with, so you can subject him to your examination.) We began to sink into animal behavior. Dogs and Cats don’t mate for life; why should people? If there really is a God, and He’s the one who made me such a sexual creature, then it must be perfectly fine for me to be as adulterous and perverse as I want. It’s His fault, not mine. Soon, we became totally lost in a chaotic search for significance and love.
Is it not intuitive, that if the further we get from God the worse we love; then to love better we must return to God? Isn’t that just common sense? And, if the Special Revelation of the Holy Bible is how we find our way to God; then we can improve our marriages by spending more time reading and praying. Embracing Jesus Christ is how we get endurance and prosperity; it’s how we get a Shmily love.
When I was first married thirty years ago my wife had a very deliberate talk with me in which she described the marriage triangle. She said, “You and I are at the bottom corners of the triangle, and Jesus is at the top. Now, there is only one way for us to get closer together, and that’s for each of us to move up closer to Jesus. As we each get closer to Jesus we get closer to each other. If you want to love me, and be as close to me as you possibly can, you need to love Jesus as much as you can.” Here is something I am really proud of; I listened to my wife!
Do you want to move up the triangle? Then here are four questions I need you to answer.
We get closer to Jesus the more we act on those four issues. Francis Chan says, “As we focus on Christ loving others becomes more natural.” It gets easier to love other people. Everything we read tells us the same message. We can’t give what we don’t have. If we want to love our spouse more, we must know the love of God in Jesus Christ more.
Those moments of General Revelation; those amazing God moments that happen to us occasionally – those are Shmily notes from God. See how much I love you! Get involved in the Special Revelation, the word of God, and those moments will make more and more sense. The more God’s Shmily makes sense to us, the more Shmily we will have for our spouse, or a wayward child, or a sibling. Isn’t that what we want?