Whips & Wild Love

Matthew 21: 12-13 says, "Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, "It is written: 'My house shall be a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves." " John 2:14 says Jesus "made a whip out of cords." 

Woah. Imagine a Nazorean carpenter, filled with righteous anger, flipping tables and whipping things. Not exactly someone you want to mess with.

The thing is, I believe we tend to see Christ as some soft-spoken, gentle handed, and meek man. And while He possesses them, He is not made up of only these traits. Reading the Gospel of Matthew and John, we can see that He is passionate and wild. He does not walk into the Temple and pay no mind to the evil going on. He steps in. He does something. He fights for what He believes in. 

Recently, Fr. Mike Schmitz delivered a homily talking about the cleansing of the Temple. It occured to me then, "What if Jesus was not only angered about the state of the Temple of Jerusalem? What if He was referring to... us?" He was filled with such passion for His Father's Temple, that he flipped tables. 

Imagine you taking the Temple's place. For in 1 Corinthians 6:19 it says that we are temples. Paul reminds us in this letter that we are not to desecrate our temples. We are so much more than what we allow ourselves to be. 

Jesus will fight for you. He sees the evil we let in to our lives and He is wildly passionate to drive it out. He loves you. He wants to guide you. Fr. Mike Schmitz shares that "there is only one thing holding us back from God's unconditional love... and that is our 'yes.' " 

Look. God is not going to wrench open your heart so He can play hero and save you. Although He wants to save you, He knows that relationships requires balance. You are His treasured, sacred temple. He will not enter until you are ready. In the meantime, He is on fire for you. His love burns like a wildfire in His heart. "His love is reckless... It bankrupted heaven for you," Cory Asbury states. He continues to say, "He doesn't worry about what He'll gain or lose by putting Himself out there. He simply gives Himself away on the off-chance that one of us might look back at Him an offer ourselves in return." 

That breaks my heart. God wants your love so desperately that He is literally painting the sky in different colours for you every day, while we stand by complaining about traffic. 

Cory concludes his earlier statement by sharing the following: "The recklessness of His love is seen most clearly in this – it gets Him hurt over and over. Make no mistake, our sin pains His heart. Yet He opens up and allows us in every time. His love saw you when you hated Him – when all logic said, 'They'll reject me,' He said, 'I don't care if it kills me. I'm laying My heart on the line.'" 

C. S. Lewis says, “Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.” Yet, God does give it...again and again and again, until He is literally bleeding from it. God’s willingness to risk and be vulnerable is just astounding—far beyond what any of us would do were we in His position.

See how He loves us? He is not tame, but a wild lover. The thought of you being hurt by the evil of the world, stabs Him. He came into the world that hurts, bruises and beats us. He came into the world that kills us. Made vulnerable for His priceless treasures, He took on our punishment so it would hurt, bruise, beat and kill... Him. 

John Eldredge looks into God's heart when he writes, "I am convinced beyond a doubt of this: God wants to be loved. He wants to be a priority to someone. How could we have missed this? From cover to cover, from beginning to end, the cry of God's heart is, "Why won't you choose Me?" It is amazing to me how humble, how vulnerable God is on this point. "You will . . . find me," says the Lord, "when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). In other words, "Look for me, pursue me -- I want you to pursue me." Amazing."

Again, relationships are balanced. They require dedication and honesty. God does not want to force you to love Him. He will not force your love. When we struggle to connect with Him or do not desire to, let us read the words of St. Augustine of Hippo:

"To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”

*OMADG*