“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” — Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
If we don’t love ourselves well, we cannot effectively love others. In fact, we will end up judging them the same way we judge ourselves.
God actually wants us to love ourselves, the way He does.
What I’ve discovered through my own personal journey, coaching sessions, and as I do life with my family of faith, is a gap between knowing about God’s love versus living from a place of unconditional love. The root problem is a lack of trust. Many of us are struggling to trust in God’s unconditional love, not realizing the internal block. When we struggle to trust and simply receive His love, loving others remains a challenge.
Rather than being filled with God’s unconditional love, we are empty and only have a conditional love to give. Then, we meet someone who is, well, prickly, causing a jolt to our system, triggering a negative feeling that causes us to pull back, withholding grace and love. Oftentimes we listen to those feelings and develop a judgment toward that person who rubbed us wrong, sometimes even going as far as to build hatred against them in our hearts. In truth, we are living from our feelings instead of from our new natures, which is to be like Christ, freely loving because He first loved us.
We love each other because He loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? — 1 John 4:19-20 (NLT)
Yikes . . . whoever hates a brother or sister is a liar.
Sounds harsh, right!?
This is God’s Word which is the lamp for our feet that lights up the path of life for us.
So, we really need to take into consideration what may be going on in our hearts.
I get it.
Who wants to admit that there might be hate in their heart toward others?
It’s ugly, right?
Avoiding what’s stirring in our hearts is not going to get rid of it.
The issue festers, creating barriers in our hearts, limiting the flow of God’s love in us and through us, and we become ineffective—limited by our old nature.
The flesh.
Then we read the love chapter in Corinthians and try in our own strength to look like love while struggling with secret battles of guilt and reasoning because of the strong negative feelings that are weighing in. What are we left to do other than learn to work harder at covering up what we are feeling so we can look and sound like love? We end up leaving the Holy Spirit out of the equation, not even considering going to Him for help.
We can do a heart check to see if we’ve allowed the Holy Spirit to genuinely help us in the love factor or if we are trying to look and sound like love in our own strength. It begins with being honest with ourselves, a willingness to evaluate what’s going on in our hearts and our thought life and checking to see if what we are feeling and thinking lines up with the heart of the Father.
Here are some great journal questions to help you connect . . .
- Do you feel a softness toward others, or do you pull back with harsh, unloving thoughts?
- Is love truly running through you or are you creating a façade of love by saying all the right things, but feeling the opposite toward others?
- Are there people that you have cut out of your life, maybe even your own family members whether the church body or your immediate family, and you are withholding love with your list of justifications and reasons?
- Have you been hurt by someone and your thoughts toward them are strong and hate-filled?
Keep in mind I am not referring to a need for safety in abusive situations. That is a completely separate conversation. But we still need to check in with our hearts to find out if hate is stirring.
You can ask yourself these questions throughout the day, as you interact with others. If we only carve out time to be still during our daily devotional time and never stop to connect with our thoughts about others as we do life, we will miss powerful opportunities to give the Holy Spirit room to work in and through us.
As we take an honest evaluation of our thought life, our secret thoughts will reveal the areas where we are struggling in our flesh, not living by the Spirit, and in need of a healing touch from Jesus.
The truth is, if you are struggling to love freely and see others through the heart of the Father, it’s not a “try harder, do better” pressure. This is your indicator that you need a revelation of God’s love for you.
When you see yourself through the heart of God and you are living from that place of unconditional love, it becomes a natural response to see others the way God sees you.
So rather than working hard to shove down what you’re feeling inside about yourself or others, learning the “Christianeese” way to respond, but never deal with your heart, stop and bring it all to Jesus, who already knows your secret thoughts and feelings. Invite the Holy Spirit to show you where you have insecurities and unloving thoughts about yourself and learn to receive God’s unconditional, and from there, you will begin to love your neighbor as yourself.
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen. — Ephesians 3:16-21 (NLT)
