This past week God has been expanding my view of what it means to love with no conditions, specifically loving people without expecting anything in return. He convicted me the other night of how often I don’t choose to do this. He really opened my eyes to how often I hold back on loving others when I don’t feel loved by them first. I selfishly give love with conditions and this is not what I’m called to do. I can hear Him calling me out of this and into a place where I am able to love despite how I feel.
He really opened my eyes to how we are so often focused more on how other people love us rather than how we are loving others. We are disappointed when our expectations of others and how they should love us are not being met, and we allow it to effect how we love them in return. This is not what we are called to do. We are not called to love only when we feel like it and we are not called to love only when it’s easy. Doing this is a choice and when we are not choosing love we are also not choosing God.
We were not created for ourselves. We were not created to merely consume the love of others.
We were created by our Father to be loved by our Father and to share that love with the people around us. Our focus is meant to be outward, not inward. When my focus is misplaced I am living my life as though I don’t actually have a higher calling. I am living my life as though I am here for myself and I am saying no to the gift and calling that my Father has given me to share His amazing and perfect love with the people around me.
The thing is, the only Love that I actually need is from my Father. His love is the only love that possesses the power to love others. This power does not come from people. It doesn’t come from them loving me first; it comes from Him loving me always.
He is the only one who loves without thinking first. He has no first thought of “how is this person loving me right now?” or “how well has this person loved me in the past?” He doesn’t think about the ways that we have failed to love Him and base His love for us off of that. Those thoughts never cross His mind. He just loves. That’s who He is and that’s all He knows how to be. That’s all He’ll ever be. His love comes without demands and expectations.
There’s nothing we can do to make Him love us more and there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us less. That’s what makes it so beautiful, perfect and true.
This is how we’re called to love.
1 John 3:14-24 says:
14-15 The way we know we’ve been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know very well that eternal life and murder don’t go together.
16-17 This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
18-20 My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
21-24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.
