To Really Love You Must Get It

There is a longing in every heart to be loved. We burn with a desire to be known and understood and accepted. Our experiences with people throughout our lives shapes our view of ourselves and our view of love. Even when we come from a loving family, most of us come into teen and adulthood with more longing than fulfillment. 

Why?

Human love is broken. Human love is limited. Human love actually backfires because of our selfish nature, we often 'love' with wrong motives...out of our own need, not out of fullness, so we love-warped. We warp love. Jesus said, 

^"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." ~John 15:13

Since we have that need, that longing, that hole in our soul, until we get it filled up, we will love warped. We cannot lay down our life unless we know we are already whole! That is what Jesus did, what He had to do to fill us with His love. He had everything, so He could come and lay it down, that we could take it up and lay ours down. 

Only in taking up His love, in receiving Him, can we lay ours down to love others. Receiving His love can only be done through knowing that our love-need can never be filled apart from His perfect unselfish Love. {we tend to have our expectations on human love and it disappoints, doesn't it?}

When we do receive His love, then He comes into us by His Spirit. (Romans 5:5) His Holy Spirit, the one Perfect-Love Spirit, the only Love that can make us whole comes to live inside of us and then we can lay ours down. We are then full, we are fully loved, so we give true love. Give His love from our full heart. That is the only way to love pure and unselfishly, if it is His love we are giving...

This is what John 3:16 is about. God so loved... He gave...that we might really live. To really live is to be full of love, to overflow His love. Are you full? Or are you spent, so spent you have nothing to give? Here is your invitation. Let Him in today. He loves you! 

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. ~Revelation 3:20