Love Is Oxygen

by Jarrid Wilson

  Ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

  But discovering the love of God is what will truly bring us into a personal relationship with him. It’s life altering, to say the least. Something came over me that I couldn’t describe. It was almost an out-of-body experience.

  I was encountering everything I had ever hoped for in terms of biblical faith, and it was the beginning of what I call my “discovery moment”—the moment when someone comes to discover the wonder of God’s love in a way that transforms him or her from the inside out. Life-altering love. The kind of love you cannot help but shout from the rooftops and bring up in every conversation, and you can’t hold back a smile when thinking about it.

  I believe all of us have the opportunity to have a God-altering discovery in our lives. I mean everyone: you, me, the guy working at the gas station, the all-star athlete, the addict, the lady at the bar, the porn star, the news anchor on television, all ten of the kids playing basketball at the local park, your abusive parent, and even your crazy neighbor. All of us have the opportunity to discover the wonder of God’s transformative love. I believe this is true because God created us for this love—because he is love and we were created in his image. Discovering the wonder of this love brings us change and extraordinary truth. The irony of the Christian life is that the more we realize how lost we truly are without God’s love, the more fulfillment we can actually find in Christ. God’s love can open the door to life—true and exuberant life. A life that takes all our senses into consideration and brings us to new levels of spiritual understanding.

  For me, the years following this encounter with God were full of ups and downs, victories and defeats—but everything had changed, because now, every moment, I know God is with me. No matter what I go through, I can see it as part of the story God is writing in my heart. God can take anyone from anywhere and, through his love, do wonderful and magnificent things.

  God Loves Your Story

  I don’t know if I will ever be able to say I’m proud of the person I was before I came into a loving relationship with God, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that God loves my story because it’s helped shape and mold me into who I am today. I know God loves your story too. God loves us so much that he can take any part of our lives—broken, beautiful, and everything in between—and use it for the glory of his name. My past of depression, loneliness, and pain has allowed me to connect with people around the world with the same struggles. I wasn’t always open about my past and my continuous battle for mental health, but I’ve quickly learned that the more open I am about it, the more God can use it—and in turn help me continue to fight.

  The reality is I might not ever fully conquer the product of sin that is depression, but I do know that God has given me the strength and hope to rise above what depression wants me to think of myself. I realize I might not ever be able to fully step away from medication or counseling, and that’s okay too. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. There’s nothing in the Bible that says we shouldn’t combat sickness and pain using the medical advancements that have emerged from the minds of people made in the image of God. I believe Jesus alone has the power to heal any sickness or ailment in this world, and does so often, but I also understand this doesn’t mean he’s definitely going to do it for me. We wouldn’t tell a cancer patient to lay off the chemotherapy and instead focus on God, so why would we say that to someone who’s seeking mental wellness? Now, I’m not saying everyone who suffers needs medication, because that’s not the case. That’s between you, God, and the respected counsel of a pastor and a licensed psychiatrist. They all work hand in hand to help you. But what I am saying is this: Don’t think taking medication and seeking professional help mean that you are weak or a bad Christian. Because it’s not true. Medication is not the enemy of faith. And it’s okay to not be okay.

  Depression is a part of my story, and it’s a hard part of my story. But here’s the thing about the hardships we face: As we understand and learn to live in the love of God, our stories can become a way of spreading that love to others. I recently spoke at a Christian festival where a few thousand people were listening to their favorite bands, worshiping together, and visiting the many tents that housed different organizations. I had the opportunity to speak twice over the four days, and one session was about three times more crowded than the other. The session was titled “Depression and Light,” and I was going to share about my battle with mental health, with the goal of giving hope to those who maybe felt ashamed to admit they were struggling too. The room was packed, and people were sitting on the floor and in their chairs with pen and paper in hand. I felt a bit intimidated because I felt the weight of the situation: People who were struggling were waiting to hear if I had something to say that could help them.

  My plan was to discuss a chapter in the book of Job, a book full of one man’s tension between darkness and light, explaining that even some of God’s brightest saints have dealt with the darkest of depression and mental illness. Job, Jonah, Abraham, and David are just a few of the men of God who suffered greatly with darkness in their lives, but they all came out on top. They all found comfort and protection in God’s love.

  As I walked up to the microphone to open the session in prayer, I felt God tell me to do something I hadn’t planned. I questioned him for a second, and then I remembered something my wife had always told me: “Give people the gift of going second.” If I was going to be authentic with these people about my struggles, then I should be fully honest with them—no holding back. There was no such thing as being “kind of” authentic. So I listened to God. With hundreds of eyes watching me, I walked over to my backpack and then said to the crowd, “I’m going to do something I didn’t plan on doing this morning.” I took out my antidepressant medication, twisted off the top, and said, “I want you to know that you’re not alone. And to show you that I’m in need of a Savior just as much as you are, I’d like to ask your permission to take my antidepressant in front of all of you. Is that okay?”

  Cheers of “Yes!” and “Amen!” filled the room. I popped my little white pill into my mouth, washed it down with a swig from a bottle of water, and said, “Okay, now let’s talk real life when it comes to depression and mental health.” To my surprise, people started to stand up and cheer. Not because I had taken an antidepressant, but because I was 100 percent honest with them. I wasn’t trying to hide my struggle. My wife calls this the gift of going second, when you can show people your pain and baggage and give them the freedom to let down their guard and talk real life with you. You’re letting them know your story first so they don’t feel as though they have to have it all together with you.

  We’ve all got things in our lives that we struggle with. But the reality is God loves us despite our struggles, and he yearns for us to lean into his love while we fight the hard things in our lives. Above all, God’s love is an anthem of hope for our lives. As Romans 8:28 (ESV) says,

  We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

  No matter what your story is—whether it involves depression or divorce or fear or doubt—God loves it because it’s yours. And he loves you despite how dark that story might be. The love of God can take your story and mold it into a message that has the power to change the lives of those who hear it. Not because of you but because of what God can and will do through you.

  You see, love is like oxygen. It’s essential for the Christian life. We can’t live without it. We can’t breathe without it. And here’s the thing about breathing: It gives us life, but holding our breath won’t do any good. There’s a rhythm to it. We breathe in, and we breathe out. God’s love isn’t meant to be held in; it’s something we exhale to the world around us. We can’t help it. That’s just how we breathe.r />
  You might be thinking, Okay, Jarrid, it’s great that God loves you. And it’s great that you had this life-changing experience. But I haven’t had that experience. How do I know that God loves me? I get that question. I do. I remember asking it many times myself. And in a lot of ways, there’s nothing I can tell you that’s going to convince you that God loves you. Each of us has to discover that for ourselves. But here’s what I can tell you: God’s love for you—and for me and for every person ever created—is what the Bible is all about. And when it comes to knowing and understanding the love of God, his Word is a good place to start.

  From the very beginning, God has relentlessly loved the humans he made. In fact, even creating humans at all was an act of love—a desire for relationship so profound and passionate it’s hard for us to understand. The act of loving is so integral to God’s character that the Bible tells us,

  Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

  God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

  Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

  And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

  God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

  1 JOHN 4:7-17, EMPHASIS ADDED

  Do you see what John is saying in this passage? If anyone does not love others, then that person doesn’t know God. Why? Because God is love. It’s that simple. No matter who we are or what we’ve done, God loves us and wants us to know his love. There’s no partiality in his eyes. His love runs rampant and wild. If our lives are without love, then our lives are without God.

  I could write this entire book on how we see the reality of God’s love in and through all of Scripture. Just look at the book of Exodus. God’s people, the Israelites, were slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh feared their numbers—there were so many of them that they could overthrow him! So Pharaoh made slavery a living hell for all the Hebrews.

  The Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.

  EXODUS 1:11-14

  Moses, our not-so-fearless leader in the story, was protected from death as a child, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, raised as an Egyptian, and then given a crazy revelation from God through a burning bush: God saw the Israelites. He loved them deeply. And he wanted them to be free.

  Moses audaciously confronted Pharaoh with God’s command to let God’s people go. And Pharaoh, who wanted to keep his slaves, ignored all the warnings.

  Moses and Aaron went and spoke to Pharaoh. They told him, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go so they may hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness.”

  “Is that so?” retorted Pharaoh. “And who is the LORD? Why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I don’t know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go.”

  But Aaron and Moses persisted. “The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they declared. “So let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness so we can offer sacrifices to the LORD our God. If we don’t, he will kill us with a plague or with the sword.”

  Pharaoh replied, “Moses and Aaron, why are you distracting the people from their tasks? Get back to work! Look, there are many of your people in the land, and you are stopping them from their work.”

  EXODUS 5:1-5

  God’s love doesn’t give up in the face of resistance. He doesn’t let the words of man get in the way of his rescue. Real love persists. Real love pursues. And that’s exactly what we see God doing in this story.

  Freeing the Israelites—and doing it through Moses, who had run away from Egypt and had tried to talk God out of using him—would seem to be a daunting task, an impossible mission. But that’s what God does. His wisdom, power, and love take impossible out of the equation. Nothing can stand between God and his love for those he calls his own. No man, no power, no army, no sword, no hardship, no enemy.

  I’m sure the Israelites had often prayed that God would free them from their bondage. But I wonder how many of them had started to give up. How many of them believed the lie that God didn’t love them anymore, that he had abandoned them?

  But he didn’t abandon them. And he doesn’t abandon us either.

  God used Moses to continue to speak to Pharaoh after he refused to listen to their request. And as Pharaoh still refused to listen, God acted. Blood, frogs, gnats, flies, diseased livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn (see Exodus 7–11). All of these were part of God’s punishment against Pharaoh for not releasing his people. These are the great lengths God will go to show love to his people. These are the lengths he will go to set them free.

  After the tenth plague, Pharaoh seemed to have had enough. In Exodus 12:31 we find him calling for Moses and Aaron during the night:

  “Get out!” he ordered. “Leave my people—and take the rest of the Israelites with you! Go and worship the LORD as you have requested.”

  Pharaoh had had enough and was willing to let God’s people go. And God didn’t leave his people there, even at the point of freedom. His love doesn’t extend only to the point of our obvious need, because we always need it. God gave the Israelites safe passage through the waters, parting the Red Sea and swallowing up Pharaoh’s army within it. Then God gave Moses the law, the way to point people toward God, the way for them to follow him and remain in his ever-present love. Because nothing—not outer forces or inner turmoil, not even our own rebellion—stops God’s love.

  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

  “For your sake we face death all day long;

  we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  ROMANS 8:35-39, NIV

  God’s against-all-odds love for us is just as powerful and pursuing as his love for the Israelites. We are his people. His love never changes. It has no bounds, no fear, and no prerequisites. We will always find ourselves face-to-face with God’s love no matter where we find ourselves. He meets us right where we are.

  God freeing the Israelites from the hands of Pharaoh is an incredible example of his love for his people. God is in the business of protecting his family and going to extreme lengths to make sure they know they are loved. He is a loving Father constantly loving and pursuing his children. And his ultimate act of love was
yet another rescue.

  A Crown Full of Thorns

  Jesus is God’s love embodied. Jesus is God’s rescue made flesh. Jesus—his life, his death, his resurrection—is the greatest example of God’s love. Just as in Exodus, God sent someone to free his people from bondage. Except this freedom isn’t from physical slavery: God sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to liberate his children from the bondage of sin and brokenness—to free you and me, if we choose to follow him out of the slavery we’re in.

  For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

  JOHN 3:16

  Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, was hung on a cross in our place to pay a penalty that he didn’t owe. He became one of us, wore a crown of thorns, took our judgment, bore our sins, took nails in his hands, and gave up his life so that we might have the opportunity to find life in him.

  You can tell the depth of someone’s love by what it costs. Christ’s great love cost him his life. This act of love is the definition of love itself: giving up your life for the sake of another.

  There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

  JOHN 15:13

  With the death and resurrection of Jesus, with the freedom from sin, we see God’s character of vibrant love made fully known.

  Matthew Henry said,

  The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love. He that does not love the image of God in his people, has no saving knowledge of God. For it is God’s nature to be kind, and to give happiness. The law of God is love; and all would have been perfectly happy, had all obeyed it. The provision of the gospel, for the forgiveness of sin, and the salvation of sinners, consistently with God’s glory and justice, shows that God is love.[2]

  Let me say it again: God. Is. Love. There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less. He died for you. It is finished. He just loves you.