Unrequited Love
“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God …
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Unrequited love is the dominant theme of most romance literature. There is probably nothing that moves us more than the fear of unrequited love and the hope of its resolution.
In tragedies, the unrequited love is never adequately resolved, such as in the movie ‘Titantic’ where Rose and Jack were forever separated by the frozen ocean. My preferred outcome is often found in the ‘happy ever after’ movies, such as in ‘Notting Hill’, where William and Anna’s lives and personal hang-ups seem destined to keep them apart. The dilemma is eventually resolved at a press conference where William, posing as a journalist from ‘Horse and Hound’, asks Anna if there is any circumstance under which she would stay in England.
The Biblical love story of Hosea and Gomer is one of unrequited love. Hosea loves Gomer in spite of her inability to receive his love. Gomer descends into moral and emotional poverty until Hosea comes to the rescue and restores her through a demonstration of unfailing grace and love.
The great tragedy is that we can have a ‘head knowledge’ of God’s love for us, but emotional scars and patterns of hurt keep us from living and experiencing the depths of His love.
We are often like Gomer, hiding from a love we could never deserve.
In Ephesians 3:19, the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to pray, that we would ‘know the love of God’. This statement tells me that it’s possible for Christians to live cold lives of hurt, without coming to an in-depth and healing knowledge of the love of God.
Paul also prayed for the Thessalonians that God would ‘direct their hearts to the love of God…’; implying that our hearts can be misdirected away from God’s love. Imagine the tragedy of unrequited love, that God would love us so much, but we don’t experience His love because our hearts are directed away from it. There must be some things we need to come to see and know, if we are to live in His love.
Jesus told His disciples that they should guard over his Word, to protect it and keep it, so that they can know the love of their Heavenly Father and experience His presence. (John 14:23)
The message of undeserved grace, of God’s unrestrained love for us, needs to be protected from the lies of fear, hurt and gracelessness. We hurt because we are damaged. People hurt others because they are damaged.
It is God's will for us to recover from the pain and to be lead into His love. For us to be able to love and be loved.
While we were yet sinners God, demonstrated his love for us, in sending Jesus to die for our sins. Think about that for two or twenty minutes. Guard the truth of God’s Word. He has chosen you, He believes in you, He loves you. Our Heavenly Father has broken the cycle of hurt, fear and pain by giving to us, His undeserved loved.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
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Written by Grant Peterson
