Hope Without Limits

Recently I was driving from London Ontario to the Detroit airpot after visiting family I had not seen for 16 months.  It had been a wonderful visit, more than I had imagined it could be, but there was still this nagging feeling within me that somehow I had let my Heavenly Father down because I had not “fixed anyone” or “fixed anything for anyone” while I had been there.  It was quiet as I drove, a beautiful, sunny day with pastures and fields that rolled for miles (the highest point on that 2 hour stretch are the interchange overpasses 🙂 ).  In the quiet I heard my Heavenly Father simply say  “people don’t want to be fixed; they want to be loved.”  Nailed.  My goal had not been my Heavenly Father’s goal.  It’s hard to describe how God’s precision reverberated through me.  Followed by a flood of thankfulness as I reflected that the entire time had been filled with love and lots of it.  God had accomplished His purpose, in spite of me.  How kind and cool is that 🙂

It came to mind to look up the scripture “they will know we are Christians by our love”.  This is what I found:

The frustration, the hopelessness we feel sometimes when we can’t fix people or fix their situations is because it is beyond our capacity.  The good news is, that is not what God called us to do.  He didn’t say we would be known by how well we fix people; how well we solve their problems.  And my experience has been it doesn’t really feel very good for either the fixer or the fixee (yes, that’s my own word creation)  if all we do is go out to try to fix people.

When somebody approaches you as a problem to be solved, don’t you feel either like a failure or, at least, definitely lacking.  I don’t find it is the least bit enjoyable for someone to approach me like a problem (especially when it comes to chronic health issues like Fibromyalgia).  Does anyone else feel that way?

I am hearing the verse Ephesians 1:4 that we are “blameless, above reproach and before God in love.”  That is where we are because that is where God has placed us because of the filter of the blood of Jesus through which He sees us.  That doesn’t say that there aren’t still things to be fixed in my life and the lives around me, but that is how God sees us — blameless, above reproach and before Him in love —  so why don’t we choose to use the same filter God uses, the blood of Jesus,  to see one another like that?  Why don’t we love one another like that, just as we are warts and all?

In my own life there are people that I love that their problems are too big for me to fix, but I can love them.  I can love them a lot.  I can accept them right where they are and I can ask God to be the love in me for them that they need, because I am like Jesus.  2 Cor. 5:17 tells me I am the same new creature that Jesus was; He was God and flesh incarnate, so the way He loved people,  the people with the biggest problems and the people that society said had to be fixed before God could accept them; He said NOT TRUE.  His actions screamed NOT TRUE.  He loved them exactly as He found them – fishermen with very short tempers; tax collectors; prostitutes and the list goes on.  And, how did they respond to being loved rather than Jesus trying to “fix them”?  They wanted to be with Him, ooooh, they couldn’t get enough of Him.  How many people do you know that have the people around them respond to them the way “the problem people” of the day responded to Jesus, clamoring for more of Him, His love.

That’s what I want to be.  I want to be a person that loves with the heart of God rather than a fixer.  Why? Because every life that experienced love straight from the heart of God found that love held within it hope and healing for the lives it touched.  Be encouraged.  You are loved just the way You are, scripture tells me so!  Receive the hope and healing in that love.

What do you want to be?