Love and Life

Death has never phased me. After all, why should it? It is when life really begins, when my soul is made complete. It is where we finally know our Father. It is where the promise is kept: the promise that not even "death...separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8). 

I believe that promise. I have faith in it.

What is sometimes hard to believe, hard to have faith in, though, is the other promise: that life doesn't separate us from the love God.

In the past, when I've read Romans 8, I think I've tended to focus on the former promise. I claim the victory, glory in the knowledge that death no longer stings. I thank God that His love is so great that it conquered even death.

Just as great though, is that His love conquers life. Nothing in life—no pain, no lonely night, no argument, no struggle, no bad grade, no loss—can separate us from the love of Christ. Yet I struggle to grasp that. I struggle to claim that promise—because claiming it means letting go. Claiming it means not fearing. Claiming it means giving every racing heartbeat to the Father. Claiming it means letting Christ capture my mind. Claiming it means not believing the lies that the prince of the power of the air whispers to me.

The way he whispers is very crafty. It even sounds logical. For it makes sense that we would fear the unknown, or worry about something, or be upset about something, because it is those feelings that urge us to live in a way that makes survival possible. The key word there is "survival." The prince of the air makes us think that life is about surviving. And you see it all over the place. You see the billions of people who have believed that lie.

But just because billions of people believe that doesn't mean I should too, you prince of the air. That is the bandwagon fallacy. Sounds logical at first, but it really isn't.

For life is more than survival! Survival is selfish, really. It is all about looking after #1, and, once again, though that may "make sense" (especially in the evolutionary scheme of things), it is a lie (and the truth: only by losing life can you gain it. If you attempt to gain it first, like the world is doing, you're going to lose it). Survival is not self-building, in the long run, but self-destructing. That is why we call him the Destroyer. Destruction is the only thing on his resumè.

Yet it is so hard not to believe those lies! It is so hard not to believe them when it does seem logical, and when so many other people believe them too.

It is hard to believe—because a lie tells me contrary—that life cannot separate me from the love of God; cannot separate me from all the things that love entails.

But it doesn't! Life doesn't separate me from the love of God! Though it is harder to believe than the promise that death doesn't separate us from His love, that doesn't make it any less true. And if I believe some of the promises of God with full faith, then (really, logically) I have to believe the other ones too just as much. So the promise of life and love must be believed. For I am not believing a lie. I am believe the truth! And when you believe the truth, when you realize that both death and life cannot separate you from the perfect love of God...

What is there to lose?! What is there to fear? Because we are of Christ, we are conquers of life and death, which make us [since the Holy Spirit is working in us] extremely powerful, even in supposed weakness.

Death, I do not fear you.

Life, I refuse to fear you.

Ah, freedom...