.jpg)
Love's Truest Meaning
By: Kimberly Dimick
I have been thinking and meditating on Jesus as our Bridegroom… It is God who spins, like golden threads, the fascination of romance and passion…
God who is ravished by His Bride and is swept away by her beauty.
Christ's love was demonstrated out in the open to onlookers and dispassionate by-standers……those who did scorn and despise the spectacle Jesus made of Himself.
To hang naked between heaven and earth, to be brutalized in every conceivable way gives a husband a picture of the cost of love. What many think as degrading, what we think of as a reproach; is what Christ was willing to do to prove His love.
God earned our love??? How can this be? We can not fathom this. Yet, even our own selfishness and ignorance did not hold Him back from a Cross. Jesus chose it for us.
He chose to lay His life down freely without one thought for Himself. This is AMAZING love.
We who mock sacrifice could only be redeemed because of it. It is not demonstrated with only trite words and phrases. It was not a half-hearted attempt but a love that went the distance…..a Bridegroom who chose death and the grave to show the whole world a living picture of love's truest meaning.
Christ's death opened the floodgates of the Father's heart to every living soul. Though we fight it, we run from it, we hide and make excuses why we have no need of so great a love……there will never be any way of escaping the awe and wonder of the God who IS love.
Jesus felt no frustration or resentment in having to give Himself to meet the needs of His bride.
Oh, and her needs were great!! What was once the perfect, idyllic relationship had become the bottomless pit of sin's destruction.
His bride was unworthy and stained…..marred by sin beyond recognition…. once created to reflect God's own image and likeness sin had now altered God's purpose in Creation. Oh, but the Father had another plan……
God's own wife could only be rescued by love. A love so costly…that Jesus would have to exchange His life for hers….love that was violent and as strong as death itself.
So here is the messy, brutal, bloody scene of LOVE.
Here is a Garden, a scourging post and a Cross. On the other side a cold, dark tomb…void and empty of life as we understand it.
God was pleased by the sight He beheld. His heart overtaken with His Son's obedience and His heart. God was so taken aback at the depth of worship of ONE sinless Son would offer Him. God could not hold back His Spirit and Breath from His Son's lifeless body. God MUST make good for all of eternity and offer that eternity to men.
God cut off death from having the final word…God stopped evil dead in its tracks. The Father resurrected Jesus!!!!…..not because of death…but because Christ had proven LOVE. God's claim for the hearts of men was validated and sealed.
Jesus established forever what the highest pinnacle of what love would look like. Christ BECAME love.
The Father MUST make LOVE a living testament to His SON. The Father MUST give Christ a reward… God gave Christ a BRIDE…
Let sons of God everywhere be enthralled with their wives as their own Christ. Let love be the greatest desire and delight of our hearts, forever. There is a way a man can show his wife adoration that is scorned by lesser men. There is a love that says, I will be undignified if I must… to pursue and apprehend the heart of his true love!
Go and LOVE likewise. Let God bring your pride to nothing and humble you. Show outrageous acts of kindness and love. Say and DO those things that lesser men would balk at.
Let God expose your passivity and instead light the fire again of passionate love. It took Christ a Cross…it will take you far less than this. Christ led the way and gave you that supreme example. Cry aloud until God fans into flame the embers of your heart. God will ignite, FIRST your love for Christ and from that renewed relationship God will show you the way back home to the heart of your wife, the heart of a BRIDE.
Kimberly Dimick and her husband, Joshua Dimick, know how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and careers, and so much more. Together and separately they have walked the path of Love, a narrow path, a path that is lonely and not well-used. They know the soul-shattering pain of separation and divorce and the know "The Way Home" to a life of choosing unconditional love.
The surprising answers to a happy marriage are shared in her posts, articles, and her book-in-progress. As you venture on this journey with Kimberly you will experience how God shines His most brilliant light in her darkest hours. Today her mission is to provide a voice to women suffering in silence, shining the Light of Truth into the dark places. As you journey with Kimberly you will witness a true life transformation that will shatter the misinformation and lies commonly fed to women that keep them in false submission.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Powerful insights to ponder…thanks for sharing:)
GO and LOVE likewise…what an interesting thought! How much better our world would be if people lived that out and showed outrageous acts of kindness daily!