Week 2 of God's Love: Receiving His Love.
- Jessamyn Anderson
- Jan 27, 2016
- 4 min read
“Therefore, do not throw away your confidence; it will have great recompense. You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what He has promised.” (Hebrews 10:35-36)
I have to be honest.... writing my blog this week is proving to be much more difficult than anticipated. I didn’t think it would be hard to write about receiving God’s love. I mean, it happens all the time. He is constantly pouring His love over us and into our lives, so I just accept that it’s happening and move forward with my life, right? Maybe not. It is true that God loves us unconditionally at every moment of the day, even when we sin and don’t surrender ourselves to His plan for us. Even though God does this with such mercy and willingness, do we always accept it with grace and willingness? I know I don’t.
I don’t feel qualified to write about this at the moment because, for a few days, I feel like I haven’t opened my heart to God’s love and God’s will in my own life. How can I write about this if I’m struggling with it? But I love this idea: God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. So I will stick to my plan and write about how to receive God’s unfathomable love.
Someone recommended Hebrews 10 to me this morning, so I thought I’d take a look and see if God was trying to speak to me in any way through that chapter. I came across verses 35 and 36 and knew that, as usual, God was smiling down on me. I need “endurance to do the will of God and receive what He has promised.” Endurance. That word brings me back to one of my favorite verses (and a previous blog post) from Romans: “affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). In this case, I’m looking at the affliction as sin because I feel like sin has been bogging me down this week. But instead of letting it weigh me down and refusing to receive God’s mercy, I must let the fight against that sin produce endurance so that I can receive His promises. It’s all connected. But what is the best way to openly and completely receive God’s mercy? Confession.
I’m telling you what… I used to HATE going to Confession. I wondered why I had to tell someone else about my sins… wasn’t asking God for forgiveness enough? But now I feel so grateful for that sacrament. There is no way to describe the feeling of freedom and weightlessness I feel after leaving the confessional and doing my penance because I know that God has given me one of the greatest and most loving gifts of all--forgiveness. One of my favorite aspects of Confession is accountability. I have found that I am so much less likely to sin if I know that a) I’m going to have to tell someone else about it and b) I’m going to have to schedule Confession into my life more frequently. I’ve made it a goal for 2016 to go once a month, but I don’t want to have to go more than that just so that I can receive the Eucharist at Mass on Sunday. That means that I’m not working hard enough to actually avoid sin and make improvements in my life.
For people who may not understand the point of the sacrament of Reconciliation, here’s a great passage from the Catechism about its purpose and how the different steps of the sacrament work together:
1423 It is called the sacrament of conversion because it makes sacramentally present Jesus’ call to conversion, the first step in returning to the Father5 from whom one has strayed by sin. (1989, 1440)
It is called the sacrament of Penance, since it consecrates the Christian sinner’s personal and ecclesial steps of conversion, penance, and satisfaction.
1424 It is called the sacrament of confession, since the disclosure or confession of sins to a priest is an essential element of this sacrament. In a profound sense it is also a “confession” — acknowledgment and praise—of the holiness of God and of his mercy toward sinful man. (1456, 1449, 1442)
It is called the sacrament of forgiveness, since by the priest’s sacramental absolution God grants the penitent “pardon and peace.”6
It is called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles: “Be reconciled to God.”7 He who lives by God’s merciful love is ready to respond to the Lord’s call: “Go; first be reconciled to your brother.”8
Isn’t that awesome?! When we go to Confession, we are receiving God’s love in the most humbling way possible. We are saying, “Lord, I am so sorry for the things I’ve done. Please forgive me and help me to find a path away from these sins.” A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I picture God in a very large chair while I sit, cross-legged, at His feet. I feel this way in Confession, only my head is bowed a little deeper in shame for the things I’ve done. But He loves me so much that He takes His hands and lifts up my face and says, “I love you still. Go and sin no more.” And when I stand up and leave Him in His chair, He never truly leaves. His mercy and grace have been poured into my body and soul so that I can carry Him with me wherever I go. How beautiful is God’s love? Why would we not want to receive that love as much as we can?
As Paul says to the Hebrews, we must have endurance to do the will of God, but God is here with us the entire time we’re on this journey. He never leaves, and He is constantly loving us because He made us to give and receive love. So I ask you this: how is God calling you to open yourself up to Him and receive the beautiful love He is offering you?
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