Unable to enabled – don't you dare love me

Hosea was a prophet of God that loved a prostitute. Her name was Gomer. His love was perfect for her. It was love her as the Lord loves kind of love, and though she kept going back to her old way of life, and her old lovers, the love he had for her lacked nothing, could meet her every need, was intimate, and fulfilling – just as God’s love is. He had everything that she needed by way of being loved and in love, even though Gomer could not welcome it or receive it. Why? Gomer married Hosea, but she continued to have a prostitute’s perspective of love. Her physical circumstances may have changed, but her heart had not been able to (Hosea 3:1, NIV).

To her, love was sex. When her lovers told her they loved her, it was really that they loved what she could give, and they loved what they could take from her. When their needs were satisfied, they left. If she did not satisfy her lovers or perform as they wished, love was abusive, rough, and demanding. Love was beauty. It was the desire to be affirmed and the more beautiful, the more she was loved. It was to allure and to appeal to the senses for business, for status, and for her survival. Love was empty promises made by those who came to her. Promises of I will take you away from here. I will make you my own. Promises made in a moment of passion but never kept. Love was duty. Gomer was a slave. She was not free to make her own choices. The brothel owner, the money, the fancy clothes, jewellery and perfumes, the culture of her day, her reputation, her lies about herself, all kept her enslaved – and love was metered out by her obedience in keeping to the rules of her job and lifestyle.

Gomer did not know what the true essence of love was. To survive her life, she buried dreams of love, and replaced them with lies. She forbade her heart any intimacy. Faithfulness and loyalty were foreign concepts of love to her. Life-long commitment only ever lasted as long as a single night. Love had been ruined and lied about in her life. What was called love, was in fact lust, and lust is really humanity’s selfish pursuit for someone or something to full the deep emotional needs they have. Love hurt, it betrayed, it abused. So ingrained was Gomer’s perspective and experience of love that she could not believe that love could be any other way. And to get a glimpse or a taste of it from Hosea made her feel too vulnerable and unsafe. It was unknown and unfamiliar territory to her. It exposed her and threatened her. It did not fit into her experience of love and therefore she could not allow it in. On her own accord, she could not receive Hosea’s love. She was too ruined.

Gomer’s story was recorded as a picture of all humanity – far away from love, unable to receive it and constantly looking to others or things to feel satisfied.

I find myself in the same heart position as Gomer – I cannot on my own receive God’s Love, I cannot let God love me as He longs to, of my own accord, because I too am ruined. The love I have experienced and known has been broken love. Though God’s Love for me is perfect, lacking nothing, able to meet my every need, intimate, and fulfilling, I, like Gomer find myself resisting it, unable to welcome it into my life, fearful. When I hear “God loves me”, I have had little or no experience of the purity and perfection of this love, so I don’t know what to do with it. My heart can only compare it with what I have experienced in human love and therefore I consider it to be the same.

Gomer needed Perfect Love to redeem her. She needed a faithful, unchanging love that would never give up on her, to redefine love for her. She needed what I need, what humanity needs – an empowering Love that can change the mind’s perspective and the heart’s fearful unwillingness to receive Love.

The tragedy of the human inability to know Perfect Love, the love of God, might be deemed as unredeemable were it not for the truth of this verse written by Saint Paul. God’s Love empowers humanity to a redeemed heart and mind – giving us the ability to receive the love He offers, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16, NIV). I need the inner strength that can only come from God, to be able to let Him love me. There is no other way. I cannot turn to God, I cannot welcome and receive His love without His empowering – my deeds and habitual lifestyle, and my prostitute mindset, do not permit it. Without the inner strength He gives, I will fall again and again to a broken experience of love. I will return over and over to other places, things and people, seeking fulfillment for my heart and soul’s longing for love.

Isaiah, a prophet from the Old Testament times (Isaiah 6:5, NIV) needed a supernatural enabling. When King Hezekiah had died and Isaiah found himself before God, in His Presence somehow, he was understandably terrified. The inability that he experienced to hold himself together, feeling like his whole being and existence – the spirit, soul, and body of him – was unraveling before the greatness and purity of God, made him cry out, “Woe is me, for I am undone”. This man, ruined by sin, before the great holy God, who knew his existence depended on God, felt himself slipping into nothingness and non-existence. God did something supernatural to allow Isaiah to be close to the Presence of God, and to receive what He had for him that day. It was a supernatural empowering given.

Similarly, this is what I need. Without God’s empowering, to have the Spirit of God come to live inside of me – in my inner being, that place where who I truly am resides, the soul of me – where He longs to redeem and heal me with His Love, I would come undone. I do not have the strength within for Almighty God to dwell in me, and yet it is the only way that I can experience Perfect Love. I need an enabling that only He can give, so He does something deeply intimate, and He supernaturally empowers me within, in order that I may know and experience His Love. God longs for relationship with me, and He desires that I know His Love. Really what He longs for is for my return to my original design. I was created to live loved, and to live within His Love. It is what my soul longs for and needs, and so from His glorious riches He provides the supernatural ability and the supernatural strengthening I need for my inner being to have Him dwell here without me becoming undone – forever in a state of being unable to know and experience His Love; forever living in broken love; forever outside of what I was created for. So perfect is His Love that it provides what I need to receive love. This amazing provision provides the way for me to move from unable to love, to enabled to love.

Saint Paul prays to the Father, that the Spirit would strengthen me, so that Christ can make His home in me. All of who God is, the unity and oneness of His being, and the greatness of each of His persons – the Father, Son, and Spirit – is involved in redeeming me, enabling me to have Himself live within me so that I can know and experience His Love.

Unable to really grasp this, what I hear is that I am loved so much, that all of who God is, is intimately involved in this process of bringing me back into Love. And as I let my mind ponder on this, all I can say is, “God, though I continually respond in the insecurity of, ‘Don’t you dare love me!’, my desire is to say yes to You who whispers to my heart the words, ‘Let me love you and I will love you’. Please let Love continue to move me from unabled to enabled.”

Continued in next week’s blog…

[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]