It is not very often that you come across parents that love in all senses of the word. There are many forms of love: tough love, godly love, patient love, unconditional love, teaching love, rebuking love, accepting love, selfless love, etc... There are many types of love, and as we go through seasons in our lives we love in different ways.
What really amazes me is that children get their first images of God from their parents and the way they are loved by their parents. When a child is little, the parents are the image, reflection, and representation of God to them. Children watch parents' every action, hear their every word, imitate their every movement, and when they grow up reflect exactly what they have been taught.
WOW! What responsibility!!!!
Just in the recent months I have become aware of how grateful I am for my parents. They have loved me through many seasons in my life, not perfectly, but hey, They aren't God. Now even more so as I am out of their home, I am so thankful for how they have expressed their love to me over the years. I have not made it easy for them, that is for sure! Yet through each stage of my life whether rebellion, submission, growing, changing, straying from God, walking the straight and narrow, in relationships with guys, dealing with school challenges, on mission field, whether leaving the nest; each stage of my life they have loved me in different ways, but with a love that consistently points me to the Lord.
Isn't that what love is about? Isn't that why love, because Christ first loved us? Isn't that why we have children and train them up in the way they should go, in order to be disciples of God, to continue the covenant mandate, to train up missionaries and laborers for His kingdom?
Looking back over the years, I can say without a shadow of a doubt my parents have loved me well. No one can ever love perfectly, other than God himself. But He does infuse His children with the love that comes from His heart, and that is what I have been shown for 26 years now. I am so thankful for the love that was showered on me at every juncture in life. And looking back I can see now that it was a symbolic love, a shadow love, a mirror love, a reflection of the love of my God who created me and loves me more than anyone on this earth possibly could!
My heart is so thankful for the consistent, stable, faithful, unwavering, serving, tough and godly love that my parents have lavished on me as I have grown. I can honestly thank God for giving them that love for me which pointed me straight back to Him. None was to take His place, or to take credit from Him, none of their love was to boast about themselves, it was all about loving me to the Cross.
Shouldn't that be our reason for loving.....
As I desire to have children one day, I cringe to see how sinful I am and how awful I am at loving people. I have a long way to go, but I know that God will continue to grow me and fill me with His love in order for me to pour it out, not just on my kids but on those that He brings into my life.
Oh, I pray that He will love through me in every way and that one day my children will be able to look back as they walk day by day with the Lord, the God of their salvation and say my parents have loved me well with the love that has only pointed me to Christ.
I am so in need of grace daily in order to live and love in that manner. As I sit here and think of who I am at the core, I realize that I cannot love in that way, I am not capable. But I then have to realize that He who lives in me is! He is capable of loving selflessly and compassionately through me. It has to be Him!
Talk about needing Hime every hour, maybe that song should say "I need you every second"!
Not one minute can go by that I need to be left alone by the God of the universe.... that would be dreadful! Praise God that He is always with us, always working in us, and always looking on us with love because of His love for us that saved us from our wretched sin.
He really is the only true reason to love others, and the only possibility that we can truly love others!
Praise God for first loving us!
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