God desires for us to love freely, but more often than not, many of us our stuck giving out a conditional love with thoughts of hurt, anger and judgment toward those around them.
God is calling us to a place of complete freedom so that we can love like Him, and it’s not as hard as one may think. Here’s a pull from my latest book, Ripple Effect. I pray it meets you.
Much love, J
“When our value system is intact, knowing who we are and what we have through Jesus, we begin to see others through His heart as He shows us who they are to Him. We become empowered through the Holy Spirit and our response toward others is from a place of wholeness and confidence. From there, we can see the broken and lost through grace and compassion. When we see the mess in others lives, rather than seeing them through a critical lens that measures through judgment, our hearts will desire to see them healed and free.
God’s value system calls us higher; we need to respond to His call and acknowledge that we need His help and the power of the Holy Spirit to live this way. This is why we must crucify the flesh and make sure we aren’t coddling it, petting it, and making sure it’s comfortable.
Sounds kinda ridiculous and gross, right?
If we are still living by the flesh, then our love remains conditional.
We don’t need to beat ourselves up for those feelings or shove them away either. We need to acknowledge the feelings and negative thoughts and confess them to the Lord. From there, we can ask Him to give us His eyes and heart to see that person the way He does.
We love because He first loved us. — 1 John 4:19 (NIV)
Let’s stop complicating the work of the Cross.
We shouldn’t have to work hard to see how valuable someone is to the Kingdom of God in order to love or try to find something good about them so it’s easier to. We need to connect with God’s value system that is beyond our humanistic way of thinking, and it all starts with knowing how much we are all loved by God, and from there, our value system is built around His.
When we experience His unconditional love, we can see our value through our Heavenly Father, and from there we can see others through His eyes. We can see how He has woven unique strengths into each of our designs, and that we all have a valuable role in the body of Christ.
Learning to walk in God’s unconditional love, placing His value system over ourselves and others is part of the refining process that makes us more like Him.” —Ripple Effect: A Transformational Journey into God’s Heart That Will Change You from the Inside Out
