That Which Is Desirable
When was the last time you heard the words, "I love you?" In our society, we toss around these words so much they have lost their meaning. We read them in advertisements, hear them on the radio or view them on TV. However, many of us may have never heard these words addressed to us. Some may have only heard "I love you" in a romantic situation. How do you know someone loves you? Can you hear it in what they say, or see it in what they do? What is your love language?
How do you know God loves you? He called His Son beloved – agapetos (Matthew 3:17), and Daniel himself had the privilege of being told by an angel that he was greatly beloved (Daniel 9:23; 10:11,19). The Hebrew word for beloved is chemdah {khem-daw'}, and it is this word that we translate as "beloved." In Hebrew, Chemda means desire, that which is desirable, pleasant, and precious. And, this is how the angel addressed Daniel. This word Chemda is the same word that is Jews used to describe a precious jewel or fertile land. Friends, Daniel was being compared to a jewel or a productive land overflowing with cattle, and vegetation which produced delicious milk and sweet-tasting honey. Mmm-- imagine --the beautiful and delightful dishes the Jews could make from milk and honey. Just think of that which you desire, that which is precious to you, and pleasing to your senses-- maybe it is something that stimulates your palate, quenches your thirst, or satisfies your longing. Whatever it is that you've imagined (that is ethically acceptable), that feeling of pleasure you get, that joy, is a small fragment of the immense satisfaction that God felt about Daniel and feels toward us.
"I am no, Daniel," you may say, and of course, you are right. There was only one Daniel, and there is only one you, and one me. Let's agree on this, first; God loves each one of us because we are His, irrespective of our choices. He sent His Son to die for all who lived or would ever live-- that each might be saved (John 3:16) if he so desired. God sends His sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), and the beauty of nature is available to all mankind. As strange as it sounds, the act of destroying Sin and sinners is an act of love. Second, it is only by the Faith of Jesus that we please God-- not by our faith or belief, for even the devils believe and tremble. We are His beloveds when we yield to the bidding of His indwelling Spirit. We become His beloved when we allow Him to transform us into precious jewels, or soft fertile soil that bears fruit. It takes time to create a precious jewel. It takes heat and pressure to convert common mineral into a crystallized form. Then a jeweler works on the piece to mold and shape it into a beautiful piece of jewelry. The more delicate the work, the more the need for a master craftsman. This process is akin to God's work in us. He looks at us lovingly, determining by His skilled eye the nature of the work to be performed. We are His jewel, and He will (if we allow Him), not only remove the rough edges but will so cut our stony hearts with such precision, that the brilliance and clarity of the Son is apparent to all.
Just as it takes time and effort to dig the land for jewels, it takes time and effort to make it suitable for sowing. We have hearts of stone. To make them tender and fertile, God has to break the fallow ground and replace it with His perfect topsoil. It is He who must till the stony or thorny or wayside soil, and it is we who, if we choose, will be made willing (to do of His goodwill and pleasure -- Phil. 2:13). It may take years, but it doesn't have to. After the ground is tilled and fertilized, God sows the seed, then the soil is watered, and the ground weeded regularly. How patiently, the sower waits for the land to bear fruit. He must often wait at least three seasons. How he yearns for that crop to grow, and ripen that He may feed others; this is how Christ and the Father wait for us. It through the Holy Spirit working in us--tilling the soil with truth, softening it with the rain, and through the photosynthesis of the word, ripening the plant to produce copious delicious fruit. Allowing this kind of work to go on in us, we become that which the universe finds pleasant, precious, and desirable.
The process of making us precious jewels from rough crystal rocks, or fertile land from seemingly dry, rocky, thorny wayside soil, may seem harsh and unloving, but, well-- remember that desire we talked about earlier, that longing and yearning? Well, "Christ is waiting with longing desire for the complete reproduction
of His mind in the people who love Him-- then the end will come." What God puts us through is necessary for us to become genuinely loving people. All our selfishness and self-love must go. And God Himself is ready and willing to replace it with His selfless and unconditional, fertilized topsoil. It is His love that produces fruit, such as works of faith, that acceptable. It is His love with which we love our family members (and our neighbors), and all will know us by this love.
Brothers and sisters, let's allow God to call us His beloved, not because we try to be like Daniel, but because we allow Jesus -- to make us like Himself.
| RR |
