I post often about a once a week group I attend called Tomball Love Machine. The meeting is a total of 2 hours long and people arrive as they can. It is interesting on a lot of levels, not just spiritual. I have notice that the larger the attendance, the bigger the group dynamics. And the bigger the group dynamics the longer it takes for all the personalities to settle and God to come through. So for that reason I am thankful that the meeting has so much time allotted to it.
Here I say all of this thinking it is everyone else's personalities that are getting in the way, but then I realize it is my personality -- that I am seeing as what I am seeing really is the log in my eye thinking it's a splinter in theirs. So with that realization and confession out of the way, I will say that it took me nearly the whole meeting to get into the place where I clearly saw God moving.
For me it began with a mother tearfully expressing that she needs to come to a place where she appreciates herself. This stems from the fact that she has two children with two completely different personalities. One is very loving, affectionate and doting on mom. The other I believe can be described as indifferent. So mom has a hard time understanding the indifferent child. She does not "appreciate" the difference therefore has discovered that she does not "appreciate" herself, and that this lack of self appreciation prevents or hinder her appreciating her daughter. This confession prompted someone else to open up and declare how difficult it is to love yourself. Which prompted another mother to say, "What? Am I just supposed to ask God to show me why He loves me?"
This is a common occurrence in Christianity and the world for that matter. People do not "love themselves" or understand how or why God loves them. I not only see it all the time, I have experienced it to the point of despair these people are experiencing it.
But the result in our group was that one of the men there read to last mom a beautiful understanding of her pain. Then proceeded to sing her a song. It was an absolute beautiful expression of God's love for her. In fact it was an undeniable expression of God's love for her. The whole room had teary eyes and people commented how beautiful her heart was and the experience she opened.
Sobbing she replied, "being beautiful sux."
How important is it for us to understand God loves us? And not only that He loves us, but why He loves us. We need to experience and understand that for a healthy life. When we don't understand how and why God loves us, then we constantly look outside ourselves for that love. We look to spouses, children, parents, pastors, friends, anything and anyone to show us the love we crave and all of those "people" are always going to let us down. When they don't let us down it is only because Christ loved us through them in that moment.
Probably even more important than "knowing" how and why God loves us, we need to experience it. The sobbing mom declaring being beautiful sux was in that experience. In that moment she was experiencing the love of God. Being beautiful sux, because when God is loving you all the excuses fall away. All the pretense falls away. When God shows you that you are beautiful, you realize everything you thought you were is ugly.
We are loved because we are God's children. We are loved because we are each individual, unique, priceless vessels designed to be filled with Christ. I asked the sobbing mom, why do you love your daughter? Her reply was, I don't know. Truth is she loves her daughter because she is her daughter, and God love us simply because we are His children. Nothing more, nothing less.
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