IN THE NAME OF JESUS

There are those who have never felt real love before. They don’t know what real joy is. Could we help them feel what God’s love is like—the love they truly need?

The Bible tells us that everything is possible with God.

Friends might wonder what this love we speak of is all about.  They wish they knew it. Would it fill that emptiness they have inside—that loneliness, that hunger?

Physician and author Gabor Maté worked on the Vancouver Downtown Eastside, treating addicts and prostitutes. He tells how almost all his woman patients told him about the abuse and neglect they suffered as they were growing up. He talks about the great hunger these people have for “something,” though in most cases they know not what. Maté identifies this as a hunger for God. He says there is a God-shaped void, or hole, inside these troubled people, a hole they seek to fill through alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity.

Not everyone who hungers for God has addictions. There are many lonely people, people who know their life is missing something. Others suffer from illnesses that are hard to cope with—illnesses that cause endless pain.

If you know God and you have friends who are in need of him, I hope you will show them what his love is like. In every way I hope you will. Because right now they are children without a Father.

Please tell them they matter to him—the  God of never-ending love. To him who will receive them like a child. The Father who will always keep them close if they will let him.

You’ll be surprised to find that in reaching out with God’s love to those who need it, your own capacity for his love will increase. You’ll discover the joy of sharing him with another.

The Bible tells a story about someone who had been living with a God-shaped void inside.

A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. (Luke 7:37-38)

I wonder if the woman, thought to be a prostitute, instinctively recognized Jesus as someone who regarded her as a special person, someone he deeply loved. Did she recognize him in the way someone might recognize a long lost mother or father whose love she vaguely remembers but hasn’t felt for a long time?

What would life have been like for her, making a living by giving herself to strange men? How would she have felt about herself? Unclean? Worthless? Very likely. What would she need to feel better? I’m sure what she needed was for someone to show her real love—someone who would love her for her heart, not her body. Did she even recognize that need in herself? Or did she simply experience an emptiness, an emptiness she had not been able to fill?

Then Jesus came along, the person who could offer her love and who could fill the emptiness she had inside. She was overwhelmed.

Her tears tumbled down like the tears of a child. In the greatest expression of gratitude, one that she didn’t plan and couldn’t have helped, tears spilled over Jesus’ feet as he was reclining. With love, and in an act of worship, she wiped his feet with her long hair. She kissed them and poured perfume over them.

This woman’s experience can be true for your friends as well. They too can approach Jesus with gratitude, releasing all that is painful inside. Better than anyone or anything in this world, Jesus can provide what they need: compassion, love, forgiveness. He can help them get a fresh start. They will hear him say:

“I love you deeply. You are clean and you belong to me.”

marja

This has been Part 14 of the series In the Name of Jesus.  Go to Part 15 – Stigma.

 

(I’m not a professional caregiver. Since 2006, I have given spiritual support as a peer to people living with all sorts of mental health issues. I write from the point of view of someone who has been there and understands—someone who wants to share the faith she has found in God.)