I Wanna Know What It’s Like on the Inside of Love

Can anybody tell me who Nada Surf is?

I mean, if it weren’t for Relient K’s cover of their song “Inside of Love,” I never would have heard of them. But as I listened to that song on the way to work today, one lyric in particular caught my ear.

Watching terrible TV, it kills all thought
Getting spacier than an astronaut
Making out with people I hardly know or like
I can’t believe what I do late at night

I wanna know what it’s like
On the inside of love
I’m standing at the gates
I see the beauty above

We’ve all been in places where we’re searching for something that fulfilled us, that showed us what we really needed. Perhaps one of man’s greatest needs is love.

In “Inside of Love,” the singer is searching for love. He’s been on the outside his whole life, he says, and he wants to be on the inside, he wants to see what it’s really like.

Well, my friend, there’s an answer for that.

It struck me this morning as I read Matthew 2. It’s the story of Jesus’ birth. Joseph, His earthly father, is visited in a dream. The angel quotes a prophecy that says Jesus is to be called “Immanuel,” or “God with us.”

It’s a popular idea of Christmas, but do we really sit down and think about what that means? God with us! There’s a couple things it means.

First: God is now with us. We were separated from God, distant, because of our sin. But when Jesus comes, it means we can have a relationship with God unhindered by sin’s eternal sting. We’ll still struggle in that relationship, but our eternity is secured if we confess and believe.

Second: God literally came down to earth to be with us. Jesus is God, and He came to earth to live perfectly, die and live again so that relationship we talked about in the last point could actually happen. How insane is that? I mean, seriously. Take stock of that for a minute. Do we get that? Do we get the depths of grace that exist in that reality?

That’s what it’s like to be on the inside of love, Nada Surf. It’s joy, relief, peace.

Advertisement

God Sticks with Those Who Feel Stuck. Like Me.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with in my own life is getting stuck in a certain season. I struggle when things aren’t moving forward.

For instance, I’ll be stuck in this intermediary season of life between single and married that’s called “engagement” for the next few months. It’s a weird season, I’ll be honest with you. The Bible doesn’t speak clearly to what this season is supposed to look like, so my fiancée and I are left guessing as to what’s the best way to think, to act, to speak in our relationship.

There are also times when I’m stuck in sin, when a certain sin seems to be like a magnet. I’m stuck on it, and when I try to pry myself off, I just seem to keep coming back. I’m the boomerang, and sin seems to be throwing me around.

I was thinking about that this morning in the shower, thinking about what the heck this all means for me. I’m stuck. I’m a fan of forward motion, I like going forward, I like making progress. But there are so many things in my life that just seem to be at a standstill.

I must remember: God is there in the standstill just as much as He’s there in the forward motion.

The idea that God will never leave us nor forsake us means that we can be thankful for His patience with us in the slow seasons, His faithfulness to us when we’re stuck, and the fact that He never unsticks Himself from me. God sticks with us.

This is encouragement. This is what I need to remember when I feel like I’m struggling with forward motion. I’m feeling like Relient K –

Cause I struggle with forward motion
I struggle with forward motion
We all struggle with forward motion
Cause forward motion is harder than it sounds
Well every time I gain some ground
I gotta turn myself around again
It’s harder than it sounds
Well every time I gain some ground
I gotta turn myself around again

We can get stuck in these kind of cycles in our lives where we find ourselves in the same positions over and over again. God doesn’t leave us in those positions. He sticks with us when we feel stuck, and He’s there with His Word as one of many tools to help us in those times.

Praise Him for that! Otherwise I’d have no reason to try to get unstuck.