“I am won by your unconditional love.”
This is a line from our new song Captivated. Is God’s love really unconditional? Really? I guess I find this astounding. What does it even mean?
I’m not used to that sort of love. Who is?
It’s no wonder we have difficulty with believing, much less receiving this unconditional love from our Papa.
Love without conditions. You can do whatever you want with it. Receive it or Ignore it. Cherish or Spurn it. Run into the arms of love or Run from it by choosing sin instead. Honor this love or Insult it. But, nothing we choose to do could ever make him love us any less! We can’t mess this up because his love doesn’t depend on our response. He will still love you… completely. Infinitely. Forever. He is Love!
This song Captivated will appear on our new album Reflect Love. When people ask me what our new album is about I tell them the theme is, “God is Love, in whom we live and move and have our being.”
This is based on two verses:
and, wait for it…
God can’t help it. He just IS Love! He can’t escape it. And the awesome thing is, we can’t escape him. We are in him! Love is God’s character, his DNA, his very essence. He will always do and act and think in the most infinitely loving way toward you and everything and everyone else he has made!
So, what is love?
Recently a friend of mine challenged me to “meditate daily on Corinthians 13…above all else, love is what we need” (he sent me this link). It really made me think. I am fairly familiar with that passage of Scripture, but his challenge took me deeper into it and to ask the really hard questions. Is this what my life looks like right now? Is this what people see in my responses to convos on Facebook? How I treat my wife, kids, friends, or even enemies?
Let’s take a look at the passage:
Love Is the Greatest
…So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all. If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. Let love be your highest goal! (1 Cor 13 NLT)
The apostle whom Jesus loved (John) informs us that “we love because he first loved us.” We love each other because He first loved us. We love God because he first loved us. So receiving his love is a pretty big deal as we cannot be expected or even begin to love if we don’t first receive the love of God, right? We must connect to the vine, our source of life and love. “Abide in my love“, Jesus says.
I love to tell everyone I meet:
“It is the primary responsibility of every human being is just to let God love you!”
That’s it. Once we are good receivers of God’s love, everything else falls into place. When I was first learning this concept I would drive around and pray, “God, I receive your love… I receive your love.” I would very often feel what I call the sunshine of heaven coming into the widows of my soul and warming me. Even now I am praying this and feeling the Lords love.
Enjoy this worship song! We hope it connects you to the Lord and his love in a really special way: