God is love. 1 John 4:16
His very nature is perfect love, but because of sin love does not always come freely and natural to His children. You may feel frustrated because you have been called by God to love, yet you do not understand how to love others. God in His grace has made provisions for our human weakness, and He is prepared to teach us how to love one another. There are no exceptions. God can teach us to love even that especially difficult person.
Are you struggling to love someone? God will help you. He will enable you to love your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends, or you enemy in a deeper way than you could ever love them on your own. If you do not know how to express your love in a meaningful way, God will teach you how to do this. God is the authority on love. As you relate to others, ask God to make His love overflow to them through you life.- Experiencing God- Henry Blackaby
The problem with God's love, simply put; is us! I offer myself as an example.
Over my lifetime I have read and shared on the great love of God numerous times. I have written and preached so many times on 1 Corinthians 13 the great love chapter; I have lost count. However, for the longest time I struggled to totally wrap my head around how God could love me so much, as bad as I was. I mean, when I was very young my Grandmother told my Mom I was a punishment from God to her for sex outside of marriage. I was born with a horrible birth defect so that must have been the punishment she as referring to and that stuck with me for years. My mind was constantly bombarded by satan reminding me of my closet full of a lifetime of skeletons, my horrible failures and the many times I let God down in such massive ways; how could He love me??!! I for years, "knew" He had given up on me and I had resigned myself to the fact that I may never see the Kingdom and, that was a just sentence for me; eventually becoming settled into that thinking. Wildly though, I DID know that God's love was amazing and I wanted to share that with everyone! My goal was to make sure I did everything I could to help them make it to the Kingdom no matter whether I was going to be there or not. That became part of my mission in life, helping others to the Kingdom by sharing with them the amazing love of God and His never-ending friendship.
Back to the problem with God's love. I loved in life, but not as deeply as I should have; I just didn't understand the depth of love since I would not allow God's love to be enough to cover my inner raggedness. Even though I held, wept and prayed with hundreds upon hundreds of people ALWAYS lifting up Jesus and His unfailing love, inside, I never allowed myself to love myself and accept that same love that I was lifting up to the world. Daily I was plagued by the fact that I wasn't good enough for the love of God but, I would suppress that and share with everyone I came in contact with that the God of Heaven loves them and wants them to be His best friend. At one point I was blessed to have a 30-min radio show that reached many, MANY people for God and my topic was always about the love of God and building that forever friendship. Yet still, I could never convince myself. I believed it all, but for someone else, not me. We often are our own worst enemies; we need to stop!!
Tomorrow I will share with you how forgiveness made a difference in my life but today I want you to know that when we don't allow ourselves to love ourselves, we will never ever experience the fullness of God's love within us. Consequently, we will never be able to fully love those around us. The problem with God's love, IS us. We just won't stay out of our own way and tell satan that he is defeated. I will be honest, I still struggle occasionally but my foundation is MUCH different and stronger now. Someone out there will identify with my struggle I'm sure. My past is bad, but so is yours. I have shamed God in a number of ways, but so have you. PLEASE remember: His love is greater than ALL of satan's attacks!!
Friend, it is okay to love yourself just as you are today even with all of your past ugliness and darkness, Jesus does. As long as you are still breathing the love of God is alive and well in and around you. Stop beating yourself up, Jesus isn't beating you up!! He wants to comfort and strengthen you! Max Lucado once said: "If Jesus had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it!" Let's give Him a picture with a smile on it!!
Come back tomorrow for more of my story!!