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Just do it. Three ordinary words yet one extraordinary sports brand. Despite being an Adidas lover, I just can't help falling for Nike's signature slogan. The unmistakable white or black swoosh accompanied by the urge to 'just do it' has graced T-shirts galore.
Beyond being just a slogan for Nike, 'just do it' can be viewed as a maxim that transcends sport into all facets of everyday life. It's that overwhelming compulsion to act, that nagging desire that refuses to go away until it is fulfilled, that constant prodding and badgering to exit one's zone of comfort.
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Love is typically illustrated in reciprocity or simpler terms, nipe-nikupe. It's ingrained in our mindset to give love and receive it back, and it's the same mindset we take with us when it comes to loving God. Action-oriented love, so much so, that when we are not in a position to act and show our love, we believe God couldn't possibly love us back and at present he loves us less.
To paint a clearer picture, I'll borrow from the 5 love languages of love as defined by Gary Chapman. We express and expect to receive love in 5 different ways;
1. Acts of Service
This love language is about helping someone out or easing another's burden or responsibilities. When someone serves you out of love and not obligation or compulsion, you feel loved. Simply put, you seek somebody's good/ well-being by doing something for them. No love language says 'love is a verb' than this one.
2. Receiving gifts
This love language can sometimes be misconstrued for materialism which isn't always the case. The recipient of the gift thrives on the love, thoughtfulness and effort behind the gift. Somebody whose language is receiving gifts believes that the perfect gift or gesture shows that they are cared for and that they are prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to you. A missed birthday or a hasty thoughtless gift would be disastrous so would the absence of everyday gestures.
3. Words of affirmation
These love language is about giving unsolicited compliments to somebody. They come in the form of encouraging or highlighting positive attributes in another person as well as affirming commendable behavior.
4. Physical touch
Hugs, pats on the back, clasping of the fingers, kisses, gentle touches on the shoulder, arm, knee can show excitement, care and concern. Appropriate and timely touches can be be credible pointers to ones affection.
5. Quality time
Nothing says 'I love you' like undivided time with somebody. Children are big on quality time and they equate one's love for them to the amount of time they spend with them. Spending uninterrupted time with someone else or just doing activities together shows one's care.
It follows that the way we learn to express love to each other is the way we will express love to God. One whose language is acts of service will love God by serving in church in the choir or an usher or as a welcomer/a sunday school teacher or a small group leader or whichever ministry.
Another whose love language is receiving gifts will be at the forefront in tithing not just money but giving a tangible gift to the church as a way of expressing their love for God.
A man or woman whose love language is words of affirmation is likely to talk about God highlighting his positive attributes, praise him and bless his name or affirm others who serve God.
Someone whose love language is time will spend a considerable amount of time in reading the bible and quiet devotions. If not, spend time with those who are vulnerable like orphans, widows and the sickly.
For rather obvious reasons, physical touch is rather difficult to express but then one perhaps shows it in the way they praise God and worship him.
Between people, reciprocity of these love languages is indispensable to a thriving love relationship. I love you, you love me, a failure or a slacking from one party and discontentment sets in. Inevitably, one becomes convinced that the other doesn't love him/her any more. Can we thus be blamed for having the same line of thinking when we don't love God and conclude God cannot possibly love us back?
Does God cease loving me when I am not as active serving in the worship team or as a small group leader as I used to? Does God stop loving me when my tithe goes from a 3 digit figure to a 1 digit figure or no tithe at all? Does God divorce me when I no longer spend time in the morning to read my bible or reflect on my walk with him as opposed to when I would spend 30 minutes with him every day ?
Too often, if this aforementioned is characteristic of us, then we will answer in the affirmative and conclude God no longer loves us. We will adopt a prodigal son mentality and consider ourselves unworthy to be called sons or daughters and instead be thought of and treated as slaves. The thing is God's love for us is unconditional and initiative, it isn't dependent on us or our actions.
1 John 4:10 reads, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." It's not that we loved him first, He did, and we are the ones who follow suit and love him back. One thing the story of the prodigal illustrated is that the love for the father never abated; it was unconditional.
Even when the younger son was essentially telling his dad, "You're dead to me!!!" by asking for an inheritance. The father's love didn't go into remission because his son wasted his wealth on himself and prostitutes; neither does God's love go into remission when we waste the talents and gifts God gives us on ourselves. Even when the son probably came back filthy, probably reeking of the stench of pigs, The father was all out on the love language on physical touch when he embraced him. He didn't wait for him to clean himself up, he loved him there and then, unconditionally. God the father doesn't wait for us to clean our act to love us, he love us just the way we are.
No matter if we are like the prodigal reeking of the stench of having just masturbated or indulged in porn. He still loves us regardless of that constant feeling of filth or depravity that lingers within because the memory of the company's cash we stole, or that sexual encounter high on masochism or that night out high and wasted on shots or on speed. The depravity whether internal or external matters not; he loves and embraces us when we come back to him.
Not to mention, that he communicated the gift giving love language by giving him a robe, a ring and also words of affirmation by reiterating that the prodigal was not a hireling or a slave that he thought he deserved to be but his son and thus ensuring there would be no identity crisis.
The prodigal son thought he had lost his honor as a son when he wasted away his wealth on prostitutes, don't we too think we have lost our honor when we can no longer boast of our virginity. ruefully beating on ourselves for casually sleeping with that lady or that guy? Don't a host of ladies feel defiled and full of shame when they are raped, sometimes blaming themselves for it, and even going as far as to think they are no longer worthy to be called God's daughter? Yet, God being the high priest he is, knowing our weaknesses, being tempted in every way just as we are, is able to sympathize with us.(Hebrews 4:14-16). On the cross, he was disrobed, naked, shamed, so that he could take away our shame, our dishonor and defilement and still love us. Even before we watched that porn video, or masturbated, God loved us first by dying on the cross for that very sin.
You can thus be sure, whether you struggle doing your quiet time, whether you no longer serve in church as actively as you used to, whether you're now frequent at just passing the offering bag without so much as dropping a coin into it, whether you're not as sexually pure as you used to be, God still loves you. He loves you the same, yesterday, today and in the future. You don't always have to 'just do it', to 'earn' his love based on your actions. Your acts of service or lack of them, your gifts or lack of them, your spending time with him or lack of it; your sexual purity or lack of it; by professing yourself to be a child of God by accepting Jesus into your life, serve or mess up, God still loves you.
