My Missing Love In the Shape Of The Cross

This sermon by Timothy Keller really resonated with me. http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/struggle-love. I have a big old hole in my heart I'm just always trying to fill with love! Like Leah, I want it from my husband and my family. My striving has been to finally accomplish a certain level of something to clearly earn both their overwhelming love for me but also their admiration. I will finally just be OK when I have a husband that adores me and my parents and siblings look up to me--as opposed to down to me. As they looked down to Leah.  But every morning, I wake up Leah. I keep trying, so so hard.  

But like Leah, I got it backwards. I got it all switched around the hard way. The way, satan and growing up in diseased thinking circles needed me to see things for the disease to stay alive. Keller says, "Satan's number one lie is that we can prove ourselves"--(and I'd add, and ought to start getting at it, already, you are a lap behind everyone else as usual.)

So, I'm turning my mind every day, since listening to this sermon, just a little toward the idea that me having a big old hole that cannot be filled by those I want it from the most-- is actually the point.  I am meant to be weak and broken and in need of a big pouring in of love. 

Regardless of how loving my husband were to be, or admiring my family could be, the hole only fits the love of the cross. My missing love piece is in the shape of the cross.   OK, now this insight actually comes from a different sermon called Peace: http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/peace. Horatio Spafford wrote a famous poem turned song about the cross and his sins after his 4 daughters drowned at sea.  What? He had it all, lost a lot of it, and the love of the cross was his answer.  Hmm. Sounds crazy or forced or maybe in denial. But I'm getting this approach is actually the right one and any other way is no peace and no real love.

So, it's The Love of Jesus.  I can't find love or peace on my own,  I cannot get peace and OK-ness from status or love of my family. What I'm letting settle farther down than just my head, far enough to change my responses to others and myself-- and to God --is that the love I need, what Leah needed, only comes from God- because He never changes. If my hope and my peace and need for love are all moved safely to Him, even if the worst happens to me (as with the Spaffords)  I can be OK. (probably more ok than I am now, in fact!)

 Problem is, I can't just make myself "feel loved by God," or even make myself sit down and just love God.  The only way to God is through the cross, through grasping Jesus' love for me on the cross.  I'm starting to feel real love for Jesus when for the moments I practice thinking about what Jesus really did for me on the cross--and why.  Accepting it as true for me and saying thank you. And I'm starting to want more of this cross shaped love and less of kind no one else can give me anyway.