Ahabah is
the Hebrew word for love that is translated in to agape in the Greek. Ahabah
is the most Godlike love known on earth.
This kind of love centers on the lover rather than the lovee. It is an unconditional, unbreakable,
sacrificial kind of love. You cannot ahabah
popcorn. It’s not about how you
feel. When you know for certain that you
have ahabah is when the subject of your love has betrayed, abandoned, cut out
your heart and you remain committed to their well-being.
Ahabah is
not being a doormat. It is not putting a
band-aide on the lovee’s cruel treatment.
It is born out of a struggle with hate, revenge, punishment and
unforgiveness. The journey to ahabah
will take you to places within yourself that decent people never want to
recognize. You cannot truly have ahabah
until you have recognized that you are capable of being equally as cruel and
disgusting to God as the person you despise, yet He sees you as worthy of His
ahabah. He asks you to see that evil
criminal the same way as He does. He
wants to give you His ahabah to heal your soul so that you can express ahabah.
Ahabah’s
source is the goodness of God. You will
never express ahabah from your own soul without having received it from
God. Once you truly know God’s ahabah
for you, He will ask you to show ahabah to your worst enemy. Why?
Because He is good and He doesn’t want you to miss out on the experience
of ahabah in your lifetime.
It’s the
love that made seven years feel like a few days for Jacob as he waited for
Rachel in Genesis 29:20. It’s the
rationale Moses used for God’s faithfulness even with Israel’s rebellion in
Deuteronomy 7:8.
When it
comes to us humans, the greatest test of whether we have risen to true ahabah
is when we are dealing with our adversaries.
In Psalms 109:4, David describes his expression of ahabah; “In return for my love they
accuse me, but I give myself to prayer.”
Ahabah is only arrived at after strenuous prayer. For David, and most of us, it will involve a
little releasing of negative energy toward the betrayer. Psalm 109:6-20 contains some intense requests
of God against the one he claims to ahabah.
God never said ahabah is easy. If
you never get a chance to ahabah anyone in your lifetime, I think you will be
missing out on a deeper discovery of how much God truly loves you.
One of my
favorite expressions so God’s ahabah for me is in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.” God’s heart breaks out in loud song from the
source of His ahabah for me. That
thought draws me to Him and causes me to thank Him for opportunities to ahabah
a person in my world. I know for certain
it is not as challenging for me to ahabah anyone as it is for God to ahabah
me. My heart rejoices. Maybe I will follow God’s example and write a
song of love for the one I am wrestling to ahabah!
Copyright © 2018.
Deborah R. Newman.
teatimeforyoursoul.com All Rights
Reserved.
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