To Love and Be Loved

Look deep into your heart, what are you looking for? What's your deepest desires? What do you think can satisfy you?
Think deep.

Have you found what you are looking for? And have you found satisfaction?

Psalm 63:1—My soul thirsts . . . , my flesh yearns . . . , in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
How often do I feel the same way? How often do you feel the same way? How often do we feel the same way that King David felt? Do we feel the thirst, the yearning for God in our soul, in our flesh?
The world tells us there are a magic 3 that can guarantee us satisfaction.
Money is the big one, the more the better, and if you've got money, you will live a life that's the envy of others. The second one is power. The third one, sex.
They tell us, if we just can have these 3 things, we will be happy.
But it's interesting, because King David penned these words, his soul thirsts, his flesh yearns, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Did he have money? Did he have power? Did he have women? As a king who possessed all these things, in modern days, we would say, they've got a life that we can only dream of, they must be very happy. But wait, why was King David still longing for something more?
What did not satisfy King David, we think they will satisfy us. What King David was longing for, which is God, the society shuns away from Him, having this phobia of God, that we just do not want to talk about Him.
I don't really think it's because God is so boring, but that we hold a wrong image of Him. If we can see Him as He truly is, everything else will seem pale. Just like the famous Hymn, turn your eyes upon Jesus and look in His wonderful face, and the things of this world will grow strangely dim.
Psalm 63:1—A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of
Judah. O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul
thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where
there is no water.
King David was saying, my flesh is not yearning for money power and sex, but my flesh is yearning for God.
Psalm 145:15-16—The eyes of all look to You. . . . You open Your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
Do you believe what this verse is saying?
Do you believe right now, the eyes of all are looking to God?
Yes? No?
The world doesn't seem like a place where everyone is being a totally devout Christian, right? But the Bible still says, the eyes of all, even right now, are looking to God.
But, do they know it? Most of them do not. They may think they are looking for money power and sex, but what are they really looking for? They are looking for God.
BBE Psalm 145:16—By the opening of Your hand, every living thing
has its desire in full measure.
Whatever your desire is, in God you will find the full measure.
Do you feel a resistance to that? Do you feel hard to believe it?
If so, I would like to suggest, it really is not because there is something wrong with God, that God is not fulfilling, but because there's something defects in our perception of Him.
"Every time a man knocks on the door of a brothel he is looking for God." G. K. Chesterson
Agree? Don't agree?
What is a man looking for when he goes to a brothel? I would say, he is looking for love, but he is just looking for it in a place that is not capable of giving him true love.
The Bible, however, tells us that love comes from God because “God is love”.
Religion has painted God lots of dark pictures of a God who is not defined by love. But if we could see God as He truly is, we will find, actually, the eyes of all, right now are looking to God. And in Him, we will find full measure of all our desires.

Isaiah 6:8—Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I
send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
When we talk about “I”, how many people are there? One, it's singular. But wait, “who will go for US?” Why did it become a plural?
It seems that God can refer to Himself as an “I”, He can also refer to Himself as an “Us”.
I will call God a Singular Plurality.
Genesis 2:18—Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to
be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
Why did God say, it is not good for man to be alone? Was it because there was some defects with Adam that God needed to create someone better?
Because there are good things that are by nature impossible for one to experience all alone. Like, telling jokes and laugh; like back massage; like giving surprises...
Like love.
It is impossible to experience love all by yourself.
You may say, you could love yourself.
But pay attention, love by definition, is something that begins with one, and finishes somewhere else. Love is a relationship, and love is other centered.
When you talk about love, if it begins with me, and ends with me, call it something else, but don't call it love. It's self respect, or self worth, but it is no love. And if it is other centered, it requires more than one person.
1 Cor 13 “Love... seeketh not her own things”
The Bible says, God is love.
Did God create love? No, love is not what God made, love is the identity of God, love is what God is. Has God always been existent?
Yes.
And if God is love, has love always been existent?
Sure.
Can you find a reason why God exists?
I don't think so.
Can you find a beginning for God?
No.
So can you find a beginning for love?
Impossible I would say.
Can you find a reason why love exists then?
The same thing.
Crystal asks Herb “Why do you love me?”
That question plagues Herb, because he reasoned in his heart, “If I say, it's because of your beautiful eyes, then what if one day she has a car accident and loses her eyes? If my love is based on her eyes, if her eyes fail, my love will fail. If I say, it's because of your winning personality. What if one day she just becomes grumpy? If my love is based on her personality, and her personality fails, my love will also fail. If I say it's because of you character, what if one day she has a moral failure, my love would fail with her moral failure.
But look at 1 Cor 13.
“Love, at no time, faileth”.
The definition of true love does not permit love to fail; that would mean, true love cannot be based on something that can fail.
Herb says, “If I can give a reason why I love, it would prove that is not true love. Because there is no reason for the existence of love.”
Let's take this concept back to God.
Why does God love you?
How many of us try to create reasons why God should love us?
“I've done this, I've done that; if only I can do this, I can have the assurance that God loves me.”
Does God love you because of who you are or because of who He is?
God loves you not because you are loving, but because God is loving. God is nice to you, not because you are a nice person, but because God is nice.
Many times, has religion painted a different picture of God?
But let's throw away what religion has painted, rather, let's just look at what the Bible portrays of God.
So stop trying to find reasons why God should love you, just accept the fact God loves you.
For love to be existent, there must be more than one person.
Has love always existed? Then has there always been an existence of more than one?
Yes, and the Bible paints them as this:
Matthew 28:19—“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 13:14—The grace of the Lord Yahshua the Messiah, and the love
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
So the Bible seems to indicate the God whom we call a singular plurality is one, but made up of 3 also.

Imagine, back to the time before any creation. There was God and God alone, and yet He was not alone. The Father was living for the Son and the Spirit, the Son was living for the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit was living for the Father and the Son.
They were simultaneously loving while being loved by each other.
Imagine you were married to the most unselfish person in the world, your marriage was really wonderful. What adjectives would you use to describe you marriage?
How about “pleasurable”, would you say it is a pleasurable relationship?
We say “a pleasure to have this chat with you”, or “pleasure to be here”; but have you noticed how often we use this word to describe our relationship with God?
In Christian history, traditionally, spending time in the morning with God is called a discipline, or a Christian duty.
But imagine telling your loved one, spending time with you is a discipline and a duty.
We won't normally do that, right? But we do that with God.
Why?
We have a wrong picture of God. If your experience with God is filled with duty and discipline, instead of pleasure, you still do not see Him as He truly is.
God is the most unselfish person in the universe.
When we experience pleasure, what do we want to do?
Do we want to share it?
God, 3 persons, while loving and simultaneously being loved, were experiencing tremendous pleasure, and they had only one desire, they decided to share love with others.
He looked around in the universe, and no one else was there, so He decided to create free moral beings with the capacity to experience love.
Why are you here in the world today?
Not because God needed someone to worship Him-if that was God's motive, He's self-centered; but because He wanted you to experience pleasure of unselfish love.
God made you for pleasure. Pleasure! Not duty and discipline.
Why do we human beings long for love, to love and to be loved above everything else? Because we were made for it. And nothing can satisfy your heart like love can. If you think you've experienced love with another human being, wait till you experience love with God. Not just on an intellectual level, but experience His love for you.

What does a marriage become if love is taken out from it? Would you still get married if there was no love?
What we see determines what we think, what we think determines what we feel, what we feel determines how we behave.
Choose to believe that God loves you, period; and how you feel about Him will change.
We were made for love, we fell from it by believing lies about God's characters. Yahshua came to restore us back to love, by revealing us what God is like.
John 17: Righteous Father! And so, the world, came not to know thee
There was idolatry, there was adultery, there was robbery and all other things back then, but Yahshua was saying “the problem of this world is not idolatry, adultery, robbery, violence... but it's they don't know You, Father, who You are. They need to know You as You are.”
If we would just know God, we will experience true love, and we will be satisfied.
Do you want it?