God is Love?

Why is it that so many people, including me, struggle with grasping that "God is love" (1 John 4)?  I know this is true by the amount of fear I see on the Body of Christ:  we hide behind masks, we tremble at the thought of Judgement Day, we don't share our real feelings, we perform for one another, we create images, we are distant in prayer rather than raw and honest, and we don't have the joy of the Lord.  I am not pointing any fingers here, I find myself squarely in the middle of this mess called the Body of Christ.  I have just come to the point in my life where I cannot question "God is love" anymore.  No human being on the earth or whoever was on the earth would create a God that is love, wrath, anger, fickleness, and perfectionist we could and would create.  I understand that our idea of love and God's are very different, He defines love as laying down your life (John 15:13) then proceeds to carry out this verse on the cross.  This kind of love is so beyond this world that we have nothing to compare Him to, so we usually compare Him to those who were to love us in our life.  If we were loved well, then we tend to be able to accept God as love to some extent.  Yet for those who received rejection, hurt, disappointment, and loss the Light of God's love is so overwhelming, He must turn it on slowly in our hearts or we would be overwhelmed to death.  Even the best expression of love in this human world fades in comparison to the purity and brightness of God's love.  To see His love we must always look to Jesus Christ, because in Him (Christ) dwells all of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9).  I understand that fear is the indication that we really don't experience the love of God fully, this from one of my favorite chapters of Scripture 1 John 4.  It really is a very radical belief to stand on God being love, many may say God is just, righteous, and truth but fewer would say He is love.  There has been a deep place within my heart for most of my life that has longed to know the God who is love but my heart stumbles over others beliefs that He falls short of this incredible nature.  Many have quoted Scripture in a way that betrays the fear in their hearts and I mean a terror.  Yet in 1 John 4 the disciple who was called, the one Jesus loved, says that fear expels every trace of terror and that when we stand before God on the Day of Judgement we will be as Jesus in this world.  Honestly my heart is tired of going back and forth, I am deciding today if there is anyone who portrays God as not love I will not believe them.  He is my Abba who loves because He is love, His covenant with me "in Christ" is a unilateral covenant of Him reaching out to me in love.  There is no performance, mask, or proper way I can live to earn this love.  I was even convicted that I am not completely honest with God in prayer because I fear if the yuck that sometimes spews from my inner world will bring punishment from Him.  Let's face it if you really believed that all the thoughts, intents, and stirrings inside were completely laid bare before God we may approach prayer a little differently.  It is so ridiculous the internal games we play to hide, when we consider God knows it all.  That even our best performed prayers or our greatest "good works" are totally exposed in His Light with all the selfish intentions behind them.  No our best hiding doesn't work but when we understand that God has declared us righteous "in Christ" why do we need to hide.  Then we can openly share with God the selfish thoughts, frustrations, forbidden questions, doubts, insecurities, and even secret sins.  I believe the grace of God is so much more powerful than we can ever imagine and more complete than all of our comprehension.  Yet we live small because we often have a small God who can't handle our problems, doubts, fears, sins, flaws, failures, and all the human condition so He is going to just punish us (maybe even eternally).  It is crazy but when we realize the picture of God the Body of Christ is picturing, I am not sure I would want to know this god.  I believe this god is far short of the God of Love I see in the face of Jesus Christ.

God is Love,
Bret