Receiving Love

Why is it so hard to receive love?  Love by it's very definition has to be intimate but if we have been hurt in the inimate relationships of our life, then we very likely have a hard time receiving love.  Many who are more influenced by legalism believe that Grace is letting people off easy, how wrong they are because love/grace touches the deepest parts of our being.  I once heard someone say that to love someone is to meet their need.  So by God loving us, doesn't it mean meeting our deepest needs for security, affirmation/praise, significance and purpose, and expressed unconditional love.  We all have these deep needs that either we are seeking to open up to God and begin to let Him meet or we have learned how to meet through false comforts/idols sought by the flesh (people's approval, acceptance through position or power, identity through money, or other ways that people give us what we long for).  Yet all of these fail us at some point, I even sat across from someone who had been disappointed by ministry.  I have often heard people talk about the mistress of ministry, if I can just help others heal then I find my significance in their finding freedom until they can't find freedom.  The flesh is a terrible user of people and relationships, we long to love unconditionally but we can only give what we have received.  I find myself in a place where God is exposing that I don't fully trust love to open my heart.  I can blame my wife for some intimacy she has but the truth is I don't trust my heart to open up to love, I have learned to protect myself from being in those very exposed and vulnerable places.  Yet my defense system seems to be disintegrating, deep inside I long for the defenses to be gone and to be open and loved.  Yet there is still a part of my heart that believes this defense system has a little bit of life, so letting it totally go is like dying.  Somehow I still find comfort in this false security by protecting myself from perceived threats like a victim of a crime who is being revisited by the criminal.  Once you have been hurt deeply you have a radar detection for possible hurt again, yet Christ within me longs to out in the open where people can know me, love me, accept me, and also reject or hurt me.  This is an up-close look at the battle between the flesh and the Spirit.  I am thankful that I can sense a strength rise up deep within me of trust, love, and hope.  My spirit is not unopposed because the flesh has as it's evidence to protect all the pain from the past that is now surfacing.  This seeminly hidden pain is now becoming more obvious and this is place that I will have to go if I am going to be touched by the love of God.  Those who have a theology of God's love but no experience are like the sound of clanging gong, the truth is this where I find myself but I want my theology to become experience in my life.  It was the Greeks who tore apart knowing about something and intimately experiencing it, the Hebrews would say that knew something if they had both knowledge of it and experience.  In our Christian culture we throw around God's love like it is a common thing that everyone has truly experienced, yet I believe there are many (like myself) who have experienced a degree (some a very small degree).  When I read one of my favorite sections of scripture which is Ephesians 3:14-20 I love the part that says "... a body filled and flooded with God Himself..." (Amplified).  What a picture to be filled and flooded with God who is by definition light, love, and power.  This is no ordinary person, this is a person who has so experienced the love and power of the Holy Spirit that the other junk of the flesh (selfishness, insecurity, fear, anger, jealousy, envy, and control) is being pushed out.  Many like the message of the Exchanged Life because it makes sense, because their perspective of the Christian life really didn't work but how many of us are flooded with God Himself.  The truth is we as believers all have Him in us but has our mind, will, and emotions been renewed with God's revelation, love, and power.  Believe me I am not pointing any fingers because I am afraid to trust my heart to love, yet being at home in His love is such deep desire/longing that it hurts.  I believe His Word that He will bring me into fullness as I give Him access into these areas of deep inner pain.  I find that tiredness, some burnout, lots of needs around me are all conspiring to expose this inner pain wearing down my defense system that at least seemed like it worked before.  This produces an emotional rawness, vulnerability, and need within my own heart that drive me towards the pain and an encounter with the God of love.  At times I honestly want rest more than I want to go forward but this is a rest coming from my own efforts not the one He gives.  I long to be so at home in the Father's love that security is Him and He is unshakable.  I do not mean that I will have such a security that I will never have fears but I do believe His love will then be bigger than fears.  At times now it seems that the fears that rage inside are bigger than God, these strongholds must come down to enter into a deep rest.  I pray that my honesty and openness can help you along your journey with the Lord, that you may encounter love at deeper level.  We were made to be loved.

In His Love,
Bret