What does it mean to you if you say you "love Jesus"? (CC, obviously)

[Maverick_Mom]

Maybe it goes back to the way we best express our love language?

 

I have a hard time saying "I love Jesus" for many of the same reasons as pps. But serving Him is something I easily and readily do to show my love. I'm not very demonstrative, either. Yet I know some brothers and sisters in Christ who sing at the top of their lungs and wave the hands in the air singing out their love. Could it be that we are all created differently in how we show our love for Him? Some of us worship through words, others through service, etc? Just thinking out loud here...

 

I think this makes sense. Kind of dovetails with the "Sacred Pathways" idea that how we worship is a reflection of our individual personalities.

[AnthemLights]

:glare: I am thinking about the death of a child, my child, and yes, you are being too simplistic in your thinking. I didn't embrace motherhood to populate heaven and if that's the purpose God was calling me to, I'll pass.

 

What I'm asking is how anyone can feel secure about God bringing good out of all things if it's not necessarily going to jive with any notion we have of good.

 

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

 

If you ask God for a fish and he gives you a snake, do you just shrug and say, "Well, maybe it will turn out to be a fish in the end." :confused: This even makes a point about answered prayer. When people are happy about an answered prayer, they actually mean, "God answered my prayers in a way that is clearly good." If you asked for a fish and got a fish, there's nothing to wonder about. If you asked for a fish and got a snake, why don't you stand up in church and testify to that? Why don't people stand up and say, "Well, praise God! I'm sure the snake will make a nice fish somehow."?

 

What do you do with it if God leads you to net the fish, only to have it turn out to be a snake?

 

I am sorry, Quill, I would not have used that as an example, if I had known. I hope that you can find peace. :grouphug:

[OnTheBrink]

I love Jesus, and we do have a reciprocal relationship. The more I get to know Him, the more He makes Himself known. It is a journey, but when I abide in Him, I know He is with me, giving me the strength to get through whatever. When I say I love Him, it means there is no other before Him, it means that I want to know Him more and more. My relationship with Him is deeper than any relationship I've ever had with anyone, my dh included. It may sound strange, but it's true. He knows my innermost thoughts before I think them, and He loves me totally and completely. Even when I falter, He remains faithful.

 

Very well put.

 

That is a truly eloquent answer.

 

I don't want to nit-pick, I'm just trying to understand but...what is this like in your head? If you think Jesus is with you and giving you strength, how do you experience that? And what makes you believe you are totally and completely loved? (And don't say "The Bible tells me so." :D)

 

For me, it's when I'm hurting the most that I feel His love the most. When I was going through my divorce, and daily finding more and more filth my EX was involved in, I had this tiny kernel of peace in my heart. In the midst of all the chaos going on in my life, I'd wake up with a hymn in my head. Believe me, this was NOT from me. It was a peace that only God can give. Yes, I was angry, more angry that I'd ever been in my life. And I was hurting deeply, and I had absolutely no control over my finances at the time (meaning, I had no idea what money was going to come and when). But, you know, God was there, every tiny baby step of the way. And I know He was because He provided for every single need, even if I had no clue how a particular need would be met. I'm not a mystical person, as a rule, but there were things that happened during that time that were nothing more than supernatural acts of God. Things that brought me to my knees in tears of gratitude. I know I'm loved because I'm blessed in so many ways, despite myself sometimes. I know I'm loved because He puts people in my life who love me, when they really have to reason to. I've learned, through many hard times over the past 15 years, that He can and does take the bad and bring good about through it. I don't mean that things turn out my way, and I don't mean that I will understand the whys of anything. But, I can take my bad times and learn from them and try to use them to help comfort someone else who's going through it, too. And, this is not natural for me; this is from God.

 

For me it is a very experiental based relationship. I "met" Jesus outside of any church or bible study. One of those life changing encounters. So when I say, "I love Jesus" I love Him. I've felt Him and been held by Him.

 

That is the only reason I still believe in Him. The one thing the church, pastors, the bible and other Christians could not contaminate or change was my feelings towards Him. My feelings towards those other things have definately changed.

 

YES. If my faith was reliant on what people did or said, I'd have no faith at all.

 

Quill, I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm very sorry you're hurting. :grouphug:

[Peela]

Im not Christian but I always presume, when people say they love Jesus, that they presume to have a personal relationship with him, that they have had a revelation of some sort and they love the person, being, we call Jesus. Not an abstract, loving the teachings sort of thing, but they feel a personal resonance and connection with the man himself.

[Ginevra]

Thanks, everybody, for your thoughts. I am mulling some things over. I just didn't want you all to think I was abandoning the thread. I just don't have anything else particularly worth saying at the moment.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I can't speak for others, but when I say it I mean that I am in love with who Jesus is a person. He is fully God and without blame, yet he gave up all he had in heaven to become a man and to die on the cross for me, because he loves me. His teachings are an outpouring of who he is, so of course I love his teachings. But if I express my love for him it is personal not philosophical.

 

I love Jesus, and we do have a reciprocal relationship. The more I get to know Him, the more He makes Himself known. It is a journey, but when I abide in Him, I know He is with me, giving me the strength to get through whatever. When I say I love Him, it means there is no other before Him, it means that I want to know Him more and more. My relationship with Him is deeper than any relationship I've ever had with anyone, my dh included. It may sound strange, but it's true. He knows my innermost thoughts before I think them, and He loves me totally and completely. Even when I falter, He remains faithful.

 

 

:iagree: