The Call to Love

You are loved fully and completely. Do you know it? Do you believe it? 

Humans may never be able to love you this way, but God always does. There is nothing you can do or say that will take that love away. This truth is yours to keep and hold close. 

Doesn’t sound like the God you know? Then get in your Bible and keep reading, because you don’t know Him well enough yet. 

I have accepted that I will never know everything there is to know about God, but I have never been more certain of His unconditional and unfailing love. Because I’ve witnessed it. Because I intimately know Him and I’ve felt it. 

He was always there, but I had my guard up and I was distracting myself with everything except Him. Even on my best days, I kept myself busy trying to do all the right things to prove I was worthy of His love rather than spending time with Him: praying and studying His word and receiving His love. 

Most days I wasn’t thinking of Him or pursuing Him at all. All that love and help and guidance was sitting right there for the taking, but I had cut it off by trying to do everything myself. I blocked His love and forgiveness because I was too ashamed to take it. I was too proud. I was too scared. Sound familiar? 

In order to be loved, we have to open ourselves up. This takes courage and vulnerability. We have to take the walls down. Admit our faults. Ask for forgiveness. Forgive ourselves. Allow the love to flow in. Most of us who desire intimacy and to be fully loved won’t do our part to get it…which is simply to open ourselves up and receive it. 

I get it. We’ve all been hurt. Protecting ourselves seems to be a safer and easier path. We can live safely in the middle, longing for intimacy or we can take a chance, fight through the fear, and reach feelings of depth and meaning we never could have imagined. We can have access to an unending source of love. 

Once you believe the truth that you are loved no matter what, and you have felt that intense and unconditional love, you shift from feeling obligated to let God in to being motivated to keep coming back to Him in all things and allow that source of love to continue to fill you and lead you. 

Then we experience more freedom and peace. We are more compassionate, kind and patient. We are our best selves – able to love people more easily, able to see possibilities that others can’t see, and to achieve seemingly impossible things. 

This is why we are being called out of fear and into love. To make us better so we can make the world better. Will you start by receiving the love meant for you? 

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