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“LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND WITH ALL
YOUR SOUL AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH AND WITH ALL YOUR
MIND; AND LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

LUKE 10:27 NIV ❤ (Verse on Bible Hub)

THIS IS REAL LOVE

Jesus commands us in Luke 10:27 to love the Lord, our God, with every corner of our hearts, souls, strength and minds. But how can we hope to love Him like that until we first receive His love? How can we love others as we love ourselves if we haven’t first allowed ourselves to be loved?

There is a spiritual order to everything God set into motion. When we are born again with His Holy Spirit, we become aware that alot of what we were taught in this world is not how God originally intended.

By faith, we begin our love walk with Jesus and He teaches us that His Father’s Kingdom is right side up, not upside down.

Many of us come from broken homes. We may have had very unhealthy expectations put on us by someone in authority who never poured their love or a good example into us first.

But God is not a God of confusion.

He doesn’t work things backwards by expecting something out of us that He didn’t first give us. He will never ask us to do something that He didn’t first do for us. When God asks us to love Him, ourselves and others, we must always remember that He first loved us. 

FIRST THINGS FIRST

This is real love–not that we loved God, but that He loved
us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

1 John 4:10 NLT (Verse on Bible Hub)

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As Christians, our love walk with Jesus is an ongoing journey into eternity that first begins with receiving His love and forgiveness. We must first receive His love, then we can return His love back to Him with worship and adoration.

God doesn’t just love us. He IS love.

Never at any point does His love originate from within us.

If we try to jump His order in any way, we will find ourselves in a self made mess.

RECEIVING HIS LOVE

“Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.
If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this
shows that we have not fully experienced His perfect love.”

1 John 4:18 NLT (Verse on Bible Hub)

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Remember. God not only loves us, He is Love.

If we are afraid, then it is because we have a fear of punishment. God says this will be evidence to us that we have not fully experienced His perfect love.

The capacity to receive God’s love is absolutely key to growing in our love walks with Jesus. But when a new Christian first receives Jesus, she is still hardwired to think like the world thinks. Meaning she still thinks she needs to work and earn God’s love because she is undeserving otherwise.

Six years ago, God asked me to step out of my comfort zone (big time!) and begin leading a ladies small group at our Church. Through the years, the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to the ‘orphan spirit’ that sadly grips many women’s hearts. Mine included. Listening to many hurting hearts, God has made me aware of my own tendency to revert back to orphan mentality.

My ‘Receiver’, as I like to call my capacity to take in God’s love and forgiveness, was broken for so many years.

We will never be able to fathom the fullness and richness of God’s love. But, for many of us, we haven’t even tapped into the little bit needed to begin the process of letting Him heal us and make us whole.

There are so many reasons we can struggle in the area of growing in God’s love. But for the sake of not creating a blog post that goes on for days, I will unpack one huge reason that I keep coming across in my conversations with other people.

ACCEPTANCE

God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself
through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure.

Ephesians 1:5 NLT (Verse on Bible Hub)

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Acceptance is HUGE. In fact, if we don’t feel accepted by someone here on earth, we really don’t want that person to tell us they love us. It causes confusion. There’s a disconnect that happens in our hearts when we don’t feel accepted. Tragically, so many of us have had broken authority figures in our lives, who may have said “I love you” with their mouths but went way out of their way to punish us and make it known we were not acceptable.

They let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we were a disappointment to them.

When we feel like we are a disappointment to someone, we eventually lose heart and stop trying.

My entire lifetime, I felt like I was nothing but a disappointment to my earthly father. When I received Jesus into my heart, He became my Lord and Savior. My new authority figure.

I discovered God was my real father.

But unfortunately, at first I saw God in the same light as my earthly dad. I didn’t understand grace and unconditional love. Since I believed I wasn’t acceptable, I struggled with the truth that God could love and accept me. I believed I was as big of a disappointment to God as I was to my earthly dad.

Many ladies have told me they feel just as ‘fatherless’. This orphan spirit creates a deep painful vacuum within our souls that screams we are not wanted. We work extra hard trying to prove to the world that we are deserving of acceptance because we don’t see ourselves as being enough.

We will desperately look to other people to fill this empty pit within us. But because they are only human, they will eventually fail us whether they mean to or not. And when they do, it only widens the divide we falsely believe exists between us and the Lord.

God will never let the love of another human being completely satisfy us the way His love does. But this isn’t to punish us. This is His mercy and grace. We need Him to fill us completely and the sooner we come to that realization, the better we are.

Sweet Sister, God will never tell you that you are a disappointment to Him. NEVER! No where in Scriptures will you find that because it is not from the heart of our loving Heavenly Father.

If anyone ever speaks those condemning words over you, please recognize where they are coming from.

Think about it. Acceptance is huge. Satan will even whisper to non believers that Christians would not accept them in the church because of their sin. We know what the Bible says about sin, but we were never put in charge to clean the fish. We can only look into the mirror and let God change us.

Jesus sends us out as fishers of men to catch fish and share with them that, because of God’s great love, we were once lost but now we are found. Only His Holy Spirit knows how to reach someone deep in their souls and transform them without hurting them. If we send the message that someone is not acceptable, they don’t want to hear that God loves them.

Ephesians 1:5 tells us that God decided way in advance to adopt us through Jesus Christ and it gave Him great pleasure to do so. If it brought Him extreme joy to adopt us, why would He not want to adopt those we think are unacceptable? Why would we want to keep them from the Lord?

When I finally let God’s love into my spirit without fear of punishment, I was set free to accept my earthly father’s ‘unacceptance’ of me. Please hear me, I didn’t accept his rejection and negative feelings towards me as truth. I pray for him everyday and have put up healthy boundaries to keep me safe. But I was able to stop chasing after him, his blessing and his approval. I no longer needed to prove myself to him. I gave Him the freedom to live out the rest of his life the way he wants to. And I am free to live my life as the extravagantly loved Daughter of the Most High King.

LOVING OURSELVES

“We love because He first loved us.”

1 John 4:19 NIV (Verse on Bible Hub)

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When I was a new Christian, someone rudely interupted one of my pity parties by telling me it was not all about me lolol. If you have a Christian friend in your life who is not afraid to speak truth and risk offending you, they are a keeper! When we start making it all about Jesus, and not about ourselves, we untie God’s hands to literally crush Satan under our feet.

But I was unbalanced and went on to take it further than that. When I heard Jesus say I needed to love others as I loved myself, I interpreted Him to say: “Don’t be selfish, Donna! You’ve made it all about yourself long enough, now give a little of your self love away.”

Exasperated, I spent years trying to pour this non-existant self love into others from my mostly empty cup. I had enough of Jesus to go to Heaven, but not enough of Him to experience victory here on earth. But God, in His mercy, opened my eyes to how out of line I was. God wanted me to see myself as He saw me and then begin to practice being that girl here on earth. Our eternal life in Jesus doesn’t begin after we cross over. It begins the moment we are born again in this lifetime. 

To accept myself as God sees me is part of living a thankful life. And when I live a thankful life, I honor Him more than I realize.

[bctt tweet=”God wants me to see myself as He sees me and then begin to practice being that girl. To accept myself as He sees me is part of living a thankful life. And when we live a thankful life, we honor Him.” username=”https://twitter.com/Living_Loved_?lang=en”]

In fact, to be constantly disappointed in myself was broadcasting to God (and everyone else) that He made a big mistake in creating me. Not a very thankful thing to do as this hurts His heart more than we can know.

Accepting and being kind to ourselves (in God’s healthy way) helps us to move forward and fulfill His purpose for us here on earth.

Otherwise we are paralyzed right where we stand. Discontented and miserable. Lashing out at others because we feel robbed of their affections.

I’m not saying we can accomplish anything of eternal value in our own strength if we happen to like ourselves, because we cannot. But we get ourselves seriously stuck in the mud when we constantly think God is disappointed in us. I know for me, when I believed God was disappointed in me, I hated myself. Since I believed God didn’t accept me, I didn’t accept myself. Then since God didn’t love me, I also couldn’t love myself. And guess what?

Lets move on …

LOVING OTHERS

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:8 NIV (Verse on Bible Hub)

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I used to say to my friends: “I can love others but I don’t love myself.” or “I can give unconditional love away to others but I can’t forgive myself.” When we posture ourselves like this, Satan can use it to deceive us into thinking we are being humble and have such pure hearts.

But God says otherwise. I know, because He said otherwise to me lol.

Our perception will become our reality. If this is how you perceive yourself, please show yourself some mercy and recognize you are robbing yourself and your relationships.

 

I was swimming laps in the pool one day, just focused on breathing and moving through the water, when the face of someone who was very hateful to me suddenly came to mind. Thinking I was fighting the good fight of faith by intercepting my thoughts for Christ, I said out loud: “I release her!” To which God stunned me by asking: “Do you release yourself?”

That afternoon He revealed to me, right there in that pool, that I was not humbling myself when I beat myself up. In fact, He told me I was being rebellious.

My stiff necked attitude was declaring to the world that God’s love and forgiveness was not enough. And the fact that I thought I could love others well when I hadn’t first unconditionally received His love? Well, that was one of the greatest deceptions of my life.

Remember, never at any point does His love originate from within us.

I know we can’t control how other people choose to behave. But if we tend to have alot of broken relationships in our life, we may need to get quiet with God and let Him show us if we are contributing to the brokenness in any way. I had to do this and so will you. There is no condemnation in Jesus.

Not all broken relationships stem from something we have done. But some of them do. We literally cannot give away what we don’t have.

If we can’t receive God’s love and then love ourselves well, we will not love others in a healthy way. Our ‘love’ will be exhaustable and metered out with conditions attached. When it is not returned as we hoped, we may be hurt and try to punish that person. Remember, God’s love never punishes. His love is never given with fear and punishment.

When I said we cannot give away what we don’t have, we must remember that we have been giving away plenty of what we do have, whether we realize it or not.

If we are disappointed in ourselves, eventually those around us will feel our disappointment in them.

When we are always hard on ourselves, we will be hard on others.

If we cannot cut ourselves some slack, then guess what?

When we are stuck in a cycle of beating ourselves up, we cannot just work harder to “behave better” because we will desperately fail time and again. This just piles on more guilt and frustration. If our behavior is the fruit of deeper hurt, we need Jesus to help identify and heal it.

Remember when I said that His Holy Spirit knows how to reach someone deep in their souls and transform them without hurting them? Well, it’s the same with us. Only God can transform us. He knows exactly what it takes (and how long it will take) to reveal and uproot something from deep within us, one layer at a time, without killing us.

We will always be in a season of transformation, from one thing or another, until Jesus returns to take us home. Until He does, lets invest our energy into saturating ourselves in His Word. Store up His promises in your heart and let them rise up to trump any fear or condemnation that tries to attach itself to you. Don’t even let the enemy finish whole sentences in your head anymore.

Wield the Sword of the Spirit and annihilate his lies with God’s Word.

Are we speaking words of faith or words of condemnation over ourselves? Our words contain creative power and shape our lives more than we realize. While the Lord walks us through to our victory in Him, we must cooperate by extinguishing the speaking of negative words of unforgiveness and condemnation over ourselves no matter how bad we feel at the moment. When we make a mistake, immediately repent and keep moving forward. No more cycles of condemnation and guilt from the enemy. 

Jesus said His work on the cross is finished. (John 19:30)

This means we are forgiven and accepted. Do we believe Him?

If we cannot forgive ourselves, we have not received God’s forgiveness yet. We will never be bold in Christ this way and fulfill our purpose here on earth.

So long ago, our loving God set into motion His spiritual order of things. There is nothing to fear in Him. He has no ulterior motives. His love offers no bait and switch. Let’s not be resistant to His perfect love.

Slow down sweet Sister, take a deep breath, and bravely let Jesus catch you.

Oh Heavenly Father, we are SO grateful for you! Help us to draw closer to You. We need your help in unlearning everything the world has taught us. We want to begin to understand just how much You really love us. Everyday, remind us to draw close to You first so we can love You, ourselves and others in a healthy way. You truly do love us with all Your heart, all Your strength and all Your mind! And I know you will help us to strive to love you back like that! Help us to surrender to You completely today. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Be blessed,

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