WHEN LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH. Dr. Josimar Salum

WHEN LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH. Dr. Josimar Salum

“The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." Jeremiah 31:3 

How can such a great and deep love not be enough to maintain God's relationship with men? Why do many reject His gift of Love, ignore His mercy and despise His Grace?

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 

How is it possible that God proves His love in such an amazing fashion and it is not enough for sinners to come and relate with Him? How can someone loved in this way leave this God to serve another or himself?

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Corinthians 5:14‭-‬15 

Why are most people not compelled? Why do many with the knowledge that Jesus died and rose for all, continue to live for themselves and do not live for the one who died and rose for them? It is necessary to understand that you live only for him who died for many if you live for others!

"We love him because he loved us first." 1John 4:19 

However, why don't many love God even though they understand that God loved them first?

These are difficult and very complicated questions to ask. But they explain why interhuman relationships break up, why lasting friendships end, why marriages of people who "loved" each other since they were young break up after many, many years.

It is because a relationship only exists as a two-way manner,  with heads and tails, with positive and negative poles, as a couple is holding hands together, with mature complicity, loyalty and fidelity.

God loves me, but if I don't love him there is no salvation, no redemption, no relationship. Not for me.

God is faithful and He, at the very least, expects total fidelity, complete loyalty, absolute surrender. His love intensity is only complete if I love him with all my heart, with all my understanding, with all my strength and with all my soul.

There is no walk with God if my affection is shared with another being, object or person.

There are people, considered friends, family members who always receive, but they do not respond with gratitude, nor with sympathy, nor with recognition. There are people who only understand how to take advantage, put themselves first, and satisfy their childish selfishness. They always see what they receive as the obligation of the giver.

Now, a relationship with our Heavenly Father requires gratitude, sympathy, and appreciation. It is certain that God will continue to love always, God yes, but what man or woman has this capacity to love as God loved? And even if you love without reciprocity, how can you maintain a relationship? What if I don't love?

Our relationship with our neighbor mirrors our relationship with God. God loves me, but I don't love him. So there is no relationship. There is a separation. Someone loves me, but I don't. There is also no relationship. There is Love only if it is a relationship of two. I can't even love someone if I don't love myself! There is no lonely love, no one loves alone, not even God!

Jesus said, "Come and follow me," but without my answer, my favorable nod and my objective correspondence to his invitation, there is no relationship. And there will be no relationship if I don't always follow him.

Any relationship based on personal interest, on the gifts or favors that one can receive, on the gifts that can be earned, on the expectations of satisfying desires will always come up against exactly the weakness of this relationship. In plain words, there is no relationship.

In the some marital relationships this happens very clearly. What started in romance, in bonds of commitment, walking together in the sufferings and challenges of living together tends to produce a rupture when exclusive loyalty, mutual loyalty and constant complicity of the two parts fail. And it becomes very serious when it is discovered later that a third party, another attention or another person was involved in this relationship that was to be exclusively for two.

Love is not enough to endure to the end and it is not enough to maintain the relationship when there is no reciprocity.

It is like this with God and men, it is like this between friends, between family members and between a man and a woman.

There is only true and complete Love if it is mutual, in the same intensity. God loves, nothing separates us from His love, except ourselves. In the list of nothing can separates us, in the list, however, I am not mentioned.

If "I don't love God", He having loved me first only contains His love in Himself. It's like taking a shower covered in plastic from head to toe. How will two walk together if they don't agree? If there is no covenant, it is because love is only words.

“My little children, don't love in word, not in language, but in deed and in truth. ” 1 John 3:18

Forgiving will also not be enough to restore these relationships. Forgiving will only benefit those who forgive, perhaps that is why God has already forgiven everyone. But to benefit both you will need real reconciliation! "I beg you to be reconciled to God." And if possible, restitution.

God is able to blindly trust me again. For a man and a woman, trust is not that easy. Only by a restorative action on the part of the Father! Yes, only God can heal and restore! Or start it over again! Yes, perhaps the only way is to start all over again!

#ASONE