Love

September 7, 2018

Believing You are Lavishly Loved

infinityContinued from here.

Because of my childhood abuse, I had intense self-loathing. I have always been “different” and never felt like I fit in anywhere. I lived most of my life feeling unseen, unheard, and unloved. All of this changed when I chose to believe that God loves me. You might know in your head that God loves you, but you need to embrace that love in your heart. You need to know in the marrow of your bones that God deeply, richly, and profoundly loves you. Until you do, you will never accomplish His purpose and plan for your life.

As silly as this may sound, one tool I used to embrace this truth was to look myself in the eye in the mirror and say, “You are loved.” This was very difficult for me to do because I did not believe it. I did not believe I was worth loving, and I did not believe that anyone who actually knew the “real me” could possibly love me … but I was wrong. Nobody knows me better than God does, and yet He loves me more than anyone else does.

God actually UNDERSTANDS me – something I cannot even say about myself! I do things all that time that make no sense, even to myself. While I am baffled by my own behavior and choices, God is not. He knows exactly why I do the things that I do, what broke me to drive me to behave in that way, and the specific steps I need to take to change. I have learned through many years of experience that I am incapable of changing myself. Only God’s love can do that, but I’m not going to tap into that power if I don’t believe that it’s mine to receive.

I challenge you to enter into a season of receiving God’s love. Meditate on Bible verses that talk about His unfailing love. Spend time with Him in which you do nothing but receive His love. Fill up with it. Drink deeply from the well of living water. It will change your life!

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace behind an infinity sign, saying, “I love you X infinity.” Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

September 6, 2018

Channeling God’s Love to Others

love_mostContinued from here.

One of the most profound lessons God taught me in my journey to forgiving others is that He provides the love for those who have wronged me. It took me a long time to forgive some of the people in my life because I had been so deeply wounded. When it was time for me to interact with these people, I feared how I might feel being around them again. I knew I had forgiven them, but I didn’t “feel love” for them. So, I spent hours in prayer, praise, and worship to fill up with God’s love before the interaction. I was blown away by God’s ability to love them through me.

While I had no love in my heart for them, God had ample love for them because Jesus died for them, too. If they only knew how deeply God loved them, they would not have behaved toward me in the way that they did. It felt like God turned on a firehose of love that coursed through me. I didn’t have to contribute any love from my heart – it all came from God. Not only did these people receive God’s lavish love through me, but I also got to experience God’s love in a much richer way because it flowed through me before reaching them. Thus, not only did forgiving those who wronged me bring me healing: it also brought me a deeper sense of love and joy!

This dynamic is particularly true in marriage. No matter how broken your marriage is, God can fill you with His love for your spouse. You don’t have to bring an ounce of love to the table. Perhaps your marriage has been dead for years. God can breathe life into the dry bones of your marriage. What resurrects a dead marriage is love – God’s love – because God loves your spouse enough to sacrifice Jesus for him or her. If your spouse truly understood the height, depth, width, and breadth of God’s love for him or her, the behavior that killed your marriage would change.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of love flowing out of Grace’s chest with the words, “Love you the most.” Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

September 5, 2018

God’s Love is Unfailing

foreverContinued from here.

Most people – even Christians – buy into the lie that love is limited. Beth Moore worded it this way: It’s like we carry around an empty cup, begging the people in our lives to spare us even a few drops of love, when we have an ocean of love right in front of us if we will only open our eyes to see it. The Bible is filled with passages about God’s love for us, such as…

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love. ~ Ps. 147:10-11

God’s love is unfailing! I don’t need to beg a few drops of your love to get by in my life. All I need to do it hold my empty cup out and let the waterfall of God’s unfailing love pour so much love into my little cup that His love spills out all over the place – onto everyone I encounter as I go about my day.

This is the secret to what healed my marriage, my heartbreak over the childhood abuse, my inclination to fear and worry, and every other negative aspect of my life. I have learned how to hold my cup in God’s waterfall of love so my need for love is lavishly met – not merely enough to get by but in such abundance that I have excess to share with everyone I interact with throughout my day.

I have learned that if I am feeling snippy with someone else, then I have disconnected from the Vine. God’s love is unending. As long as I am connected to Him, I have more than enough love to pour into everyone around me, even the high maintenance ones. As soon as I get the sense that I have a shortage of love to share, I know that I have disconnected from the Vine and need to hold my cup under the waterfall of God’s lavish love. He is more than enough.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace standing by a tree with “Me + U 4ever” carved into it. Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

September 4, 2018

Written on My Heart

Continued from here.

I am a fan of KLOVE’s new KLOVE Classics radio station, so I have been listening to a lot of Christian oldies. What a blessing! One of my favorites is Plus One’s Written on My Heart. I invite you to listen to the song, paying particular attention to the lyrics:

I love this song because it tells my story. I particularly love these lyrics:

You were waiting all the time
For me to come around and finally see
The love I was missing
There you were right beside me
Always beside me

I spent decades crying out to God, sobbing over the lack of love in my life. I felt unseen, unheard, and unappreciated. And the entire time I was begging God for love, I was actually surrounded by love, but I couldn’t sense it because I was asleep to it. I did not believe that God really loved me, even though the Bible is one big love letter of God reaching out to His people again and again in love. I only saw my brokenness. I was blind to the love.

How might your life be different if you actually took God at His word that He loves you? Not only that He loves you but that He LAVISHLY loves you? How might that change how you view yourself? How you treat other people? How you spend your time? Your perspective about the past, present, and future?

For me, the transformation was profound. I first believed and embraced that God loves me in March 2013. By Fall 2013, multiple people had commented upon how different I had become. I had been leading Bible studies through my church for years, but there was something different in me after that season, and that difference transformed my small groups. The difference was God’s love – I really, truly embraced His love, which profoundly changed me.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Plus One video. Courtesy YouTube.]

 

September 3, 2018

You are Loved

lovedIf you only ever hear one message from this blog, I hope it will be how deeply you are loved. If Christians really believed this about themselves, they would be transformed, and the overflow of that love would transform the world!

I lived most of my life as a Christian who did not believe she was loved. I actually believed that my salvation was an “add on.” I believed that Jesus died for other people, and since he was doing it, anyhow, it was no sweat off his back to throw me into the mix. A few years ago, God convicted me and made me see that even if I was the only person who ever received Jesus’ gift of salvation, he would have made the same choice. His sacrifice was very personal for me, and it was very personal for you. You were chosen because you are deeply loved.

On her television program Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer made a profound statement that has helped me with forgiving others. She pointed out that people behave badly because they do not appreciate the height, depth, width, and breadth of God’s love for them. If they really understood it, then they would not behave as they do. Praying for someone to see the height, depth, width, and breadth of God’s love for them is something I can always pray sincerely, no matter how heinous someone’s acts are. For example, this is my prayer for the school shooters that have been in the news over the last year. If they really understood how deeply they are loved, they would not have done what they did.

The Bible says that God loves us lavishly – LAVISHLY! God IS love, and He is unending. Thus, we are loved without limits because God has no limits. Anyone who truly embraces this truth steps into a path of transformation and profound healing from all of their emotional pain.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace smiling with a heart by her head. Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

January 16, 2018

Love is a Choice, Not a Feeling

drawing_heartI was talking with a woman about my background, in which I shared that I have fully forgiven all of my child abusers and everyone else who has hurt me. Later in the conversation, she made reference to me loving my abusers, and I corrected her, stating that I do love feel any love for them. She reminded me that I have forgiven my abusers and concluded that I must either love them or have not yet forgiven them. I replied that I do not, in my flesh, have one ounce of love for my abusers. However, because I love God and God loves them, I experience God loving them through me.

I have written quite a bit about forgiveness, and I think this is an important point for people to understand. Love is a choice, not a feeling. If I had to wait to feel love in my heart for my abusers before I could forgive them, then I might never reach a state of forgiveness. The way I know I have forgiven my abusers, as well as others who have hurt me, is that I rarely think about them, and when I do, there’s no pain or anger. Note that I said nothing about feeling anything warm and fuzzy for them. I have no desire in my flesh to interact with them, nor do I feel drawn to them.

That being said, I have sensed God’s leading me to interact with some of the people who have hurt me over the years – people against whom I used to live in a state of unforgiveness. I would think about them a lot, and whenever I did, I felt anger and pain. I feel neither when I interact with them today, but I also do not “feel love” for them. From the outside, though, it would appear that I “feel love” because of the way I treat them – with compassion, kindness, and respect. This is because love is a choice, not a feeling, and I choose to love them. I’ll explain what I mean by that in my next blog entry.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace drawing a heart. Courtesy Bitmoji.]

 

December 14, 2016

Grace’s Story: Living Proof Live

Continued from here.

In March 2013, Bible study author and speaker Beth Moore held a Living Proof Live event in Greensboro, NC. This event was recorded and is now available as a Bible study called Sacred Secrets. I was riveted by the praise & worship. While I had been attending Sunday School and Bible study for years at my local church, I had not attended the worship service in a long time. (That’s another story for another time.) I had no idea how thirsty I had become for praise & worship until that event. I could not get enough!

While I don’t recall anything specific in Moore’s teaching that was earth-shattering, the Holy Spirit convicted me through that lesson. For the first time in my life, I understood that God wanted to meet with me “in the secret:” one-on-one on a daily basis. I made the life decision to tithe the first hour of my day – every day, no matter what – in one-on-one time with God.

That one decision changed my life. For the first time in my life, I actually felt loved — really and truly LOVED!!

Because of the child abuse, I had spent my entire life believing that I was fundamentally unlovable. I desperately wanted to be loved but could not trust that anyone’s love was sincere or lasting. I would simultaneously try to manipulate people into depending on me so they wouldn’t leave while also holding them at arm’s length so I would be less hurt when they would inevitably leave.

In the wee hours of the morning when I was alone with God, my heart opened up and received His love. He melted the ice around my heart and filled it with so much love and acceptance that I was actually giddy! For my entire life, I had believed that love was finite and that there was never enough left over for me. God poured an abundance of love into my heart in a way I have no words to describe. Imagine a cup filled to overflowing with love – that’s the closest I can come to describing the experience.

In June 2013, which was after only three months of spending the first hour of each day with God, I realized that my desire to die was gone. I had lived my entire adult life with an undercurrent of suicidal urges. This was such a part of who I was that I didn’t even notice it anymore … that is, until it was gone. I was blown away that God could heal this painful part of my existence so completely, and I didn’t have to do a thing to make it happen other than show up to receive His love. That’s grace.

Continued here.

[Graphic: Cover of Beth Moore’s Sacred Secrets Bible Study. Courtesy Amazon.com.]