Counterfeit
Megan Breedlove I bet counterfeit-money-making operations are a lot more sophisticated than what I imagine.
Even though I know better, in my mind, I always imagine a few guys hunched over machinery in their basement, cranking out—literally, as in actually using a crank—sheets of fake twenties.
See what I mean? Real counterfeiting is probably a lot different. It’s a lot more complex, because the counterfeiters know they have to make a product that closely resembles the real thing.
Okay, so let’s say some counterfeiters did a really good job, and their fifties and twenties are hardly distinguishable from the authentic stuff. And let’s say there was a pile of this pretty-good counterfeit money right in front of you. A million-dollar pile.
Let’s also say that right next to the cool million in fake money is another pile. Only, this pile is made of real money. It not only looks real, it is real. And it’s a much bigger pile. There’s fifty billion dollars of it. That’s right, a 5, and 10 zeroes. $50,000,000,000.
One million in fake money. Fifty billion of the real thing. And you have a choice. You can choose either pile you want.
Now that’s what you call a no-brainer. No sane person would choose money minted in somebody’s basement over money minted by the United States Treasury Department.
Maybe not. Yet we make far more foolish choices every day.
We choose to seek the love of human beings (represented by the pile of fake money, because even the best human love is never fully authentic) instead of God’s love (the bona fide $50,000,000,000). We spend all our time and energies pursuing what appears to be real because it seems huge to us, when little do we realize that it’s a mirage.
Even the best love a human being can give is only a shadow of what our heavenly Father offers us. And because it’s not the best, because it doesn’t originate from God Himself, human love will never satisfy us. Yet we think it will. We can’t imagine anything greater than a million bucks, so that’s what we pursue.
If we only understood that our other option is worth $50 billion (actually, it’s worth far more)! The mere million would pale into insignificance.
We are badly deceived. Satan and society have convinced us that human love is better than God’s. It’s more exciting, more comforting, more real. And we buy into the lie hook, line, and sinker, despite everything the Bible tells us. We keep insisting that we want the million bucks, and we have no clue that God is trying to offer us $50 billion. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
If we put all our energies to pursuing human love, we are destined for disappointment. If we pursue God Himself, He will pour out His love upon us in such measure that we can’t even absorb it all. In fact, He already has, and we haven’t fully recognized it! 1 John 3:1 says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” We’ve already received the fifty billion bucks, and we’re still looking for some Monopoly money.
If only we could truly grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of God is! If only we had more than the faintest inkling of what His love is like, we’d never again be satisfied with merely human love. Instead of expending our emotional energy trying to get people to love us properly, we’d be throwing ourselves into God’s lap, or at His feet, and wrapping our arms around Him the way a two-year-old wraps her arms around her mother when she doesn’t want Mommy to leave. We’d experience the love that is vastly more than what our mind can understand, but exactly what our heart was made to receive. And we’d spend the rest of our life and then eternity marveling that we ever thought we could be content with anything less.
1 John 3:1—How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
Ephesians 3:16-20—I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
