We worship, but we doubt. Even after when we know that Jesus is risen from the dead we still have further to go to overcome fear and engage fully the mission which God has for us.
The end to these doubts begin with a name. Perhaps even more than the tetragrammaton which the Jewish people dare not speak, this name reveals the deepest truth of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not merely loving, he is love eternal. If God were merely one and not also three he could not be described as love itself. He could possibly be loving in relation to creation after creating. But in himself he would not be love. It is because his name is Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we can say, "God is love" (cf. 1 Joh. 4:8).
This is something which we can understand with our minds. But it is meant to point beyond our ability to reason. From here on, God is understood better by loving than by reason. And any love at any time toward anyone contributes to this new higher understanding.
"The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love" (cf. 1 Joh. 4:8).
But although God is love, we are not. We are each individual. We are only one. We cannot cross the threshold between self and other. God invites us to enter into his own love. To know him we must enter this love. It is the love which he pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom. 5:5).
Once this Spirit fills us we enter into the love relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. It is this perfect love alone which casts out fear (cf. 1. Joh. 4:18). It is this love which leads us from worshiping but doubting into fearlessness:
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, “Abba, Father!”
This is the God who reveals himself to us!
Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
It is amazing and unmerited grace that God wants us to know him so intimately. It is amazing that we can know any of it and not die of love but live on. For our response let us hope in in his kindness and give him undivided hearts:
This is why you must now know,
and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God
in the heavens above and on earth below,
and that there is no other.
We are truly blessed that this is the God that has chosen us as his own! He is our help and our shield. Knowing that he loves us, we trust him!
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