Would you like a love that doesn’t hurt you or others?
Not all love is the same. Loving my shoes and loving a fun time is not the love we mean. Loving my wife because she makes me feel good and look good is not the love we mean. There is one kind of love that produces wholeness and life. It is a love that puts other people’s needs before our own. This one is humanly in short supply. It is new to the way we think. It is a love we need to receive in order to give, and we need a supply that is constant, consistent, and unfailing.
No one naturally has this love. Yvonne Trout (Treas./Sec. of RFL) writes:
I began attending Sunday school and church at the age of 7. I loved the Bible stories and my Sunday school teachers. I decided to follow Jesus when I was twenty-seven years of age, but I was very legalistic. I was good at being good but not so good at a relationship with God or people. Although I married a man who became a Pastor, I continued to fail until finally, my marriage failed. Why? I just could not figure it out. It seemed like forever, but God never stopped pursuing me until I realized what He wanted. It was not about what I could do to be good but how Jesus could place His love in me. As I put my fear and pride aside, I realized that His love was enough without me working at it. I put away my list of do’s and don’ts. I found I could love other people without even trying. God put a new love in my heart – His love.
I, Tom Minor (Pres. of RFL), have also tried to make relationships work, and have failed. I was already a Christian in every outward aspect, but something was missing. I wrecked important relationships and in the process damaged myself. I did not have the built-in ability to make it work. There was something fundamentally wrong in me. I needed a source of love that was not humanly available. For instance, those marriage seminars that are supposed to work only fixed things for a little while. Techniques were not sufficient. I thought they would fix the other person or fix the relationship but they could not. As I wanted a love that made me feel good and look good, I was destructive to the object of my love. What she said and did seemed to attack my sense of self, and I responded in kind.
I felt defeated and guilty until I learned that I needed a different kind of love that I could receive from a secure and unlimited source. The only way to get this love was by first walking with Jesus. I had to learn how to give up my pride and accept a relationship with Him. That does not mean that I then had an obligation to work out love on my own. Love did not come by effort. When I gave up self-centered striving and asked for a relationship with Jesus, the love came to me as a surprise. After walking with Him, it was just there.
I learned through reading the Bible that God did not condemn me for not having the ability to love. He rather sought me out to give me both life and love. I learned that the condemnation was in rejecting the gift of love not in my inability to love. With the love of God within us, we also do not condemn other people.
The love of God is only present in the indwelling Jesus. We enjoy that love only when we yield our wants and desires to Him. It is not a one-time event. We have the choice to look to Him in each situation. The love of Jesus is always effective to provide the joy of love no matter what the earthly circumstance.
What Stops Us From Receiving It?
What we want to do we cannot do. (Romans 7:13-23)
When we fear the loss of self, all of our activity is summoned to protect and promote ourselves. These activities disable the person that we can be. We all have a real wonderful self that we disable by fear, striving, and self-promotion. What we design to protect and promote ourselves instead causes us to destroy ourselves and hurt others. The final destruction of our soul, by our means, is called Hell. Hell is the natural consequence of refusing the love that God wants to give. The judgment of God is simply that we will destroy ourselves without His love. The harder we try to fix ourselves the worse we are.
Since all our ability, in the love department, is turned inward we have no way to turn it outward. Any attempt to do so will be to benefit our self alone, and that is the problem. A supernatural event is required to provide a consistent love that flows outward to other people.
Why Jesus Is The Means of Receiving the Love:
God’s nature of love, as prescribed in His moral law, perfectly cares for every person and inflicts no harm. But because, in this world, we are separated from God, we have no natural ability to follow the law of love. The sticky problem is that without Jesus we cannot approach God to receive the love that enables obedience. Our destructive, self-centered behavior, which the Bible calls sin, is the reason. The question then is “How does a sinning person get to God to be changed into the likeness of His love nature?”
The answer is that God sent his Son. As one of us, He was vulnerable to sin but did not sin (Romans 8:3). A person who never sins cannot die (Romans 6:23), but God offered His Son, Jesus, to be killed anyway by evil-minded people so that He could condemn sin and offer a way in Jesus to cause us, who are willing, to die to our destructive nature and receive His love. In Jesus, we are no longer condemned, and we are set free. (Romans 8:1-11)
How We Become Part of This Love:
Simply put, we first understand our destructive state, give up our right to ourself, and place our trust in the work of Jesus. Then, by His Spirit, He will put to death our old selfish self, one piece at a time. Trusting Jesus begins in a one-time event between God and us, but continues each day as we find the old self rearing its head. We continue to know God through Jesus as we walk with Him. We read His word, continually talk with Him, and fellowship with those who know and walk with God.
The Transforming Results of Life in Jesus:
If the richest and most loving couple in the country took us into their family and shared their life with us and enlisted us to help other people by spreading their wealth, there would be no person or injustice or insult that would shake us again. We would be free to love, free to live, and free to experience the greatest joy. A transformed life is ours when Jesus takes us into His family; only rather than money, the currency is love.
This love will be so satisfying that we will no longer crave any other means to satisfy our soul.
We will not have to talk about ourselves to feel significant because the love of God provides a greater significance.
We will no longer need to draw attention to our strengths and abilities. We will, rather, find joy in weakness because we know the strength of God.
We will not rely on others to like us because God likes us.
We will take criticism without loss of significance.
We will not get angry and do things to get back at people.
We will find satisfaction in loving people because we have plenty to give.
When someone hates us, we will be more concerned with how they are being damaged because we care more for them than for ourselves.
All of this can be ours by continually turning from self-preference and asking for God’s love in life with Jesus.
Contact us at Rescued For Love for questions and support.
Romans 7:18- 8:13 ESV
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me…
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God…
11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.