SEEKING LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE
Have you ever thought about the one thing you would like to leave behind when you leave this world? Lately, I have. The Holy Spirit has been teaching me in several different areas but they all seem to go together.
They all are centered in Love!! 1 John 8&16 say, "God is love".
Works and Grace...fear and faith...conditional love and unconditional love. These are very connected. There is works, fear and conditional love on the one hand and then there is Grace, faith and unconditional love on the other. Which one do you choose. Of course, we all would choose Grace, faith and unconditional love. With this being our choice, why do we see so much of the other?
God gave us free will and I am beginning to understand why. He doesn't want to force us to love Him. He wants us to want to love Him. In the process of growing, because we have free will, we make many mistakes (we sin much). We call it mistakes but it is sin. The Law was given to show us our sin. Because we are human, we will never be able to keep the law to perfection and God knew this. That is why out of His perfect Love, He gave His only Son, Jesus.
In verse 8 of 1 Peter, it says: "Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others] (amp)
This is what Jesus did for us, this is PURE GRACE. This is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!!
Yet, we live in a world filled with conditional love. This is the reason everything is falling apart around us. I don't think we even realize this. We all think we love and we do but it is very conditional. We seek love by our performance and give love according to the performance of others.
Love and acceptance are the two most wanted things in this world.
You have heard the saying, "the world is a stage and we are all actors". Well, that is us. It isn't just the unbelievers, it is also us, the believers.
Love and acceptance is based on performance. Look around, listen to people, listen to yourself. We are all critics. We judge performances all day every day. We give, we receive and accept and reject according to performance.
Marriages are being destroyed because of poor performances. Families are being torn apart because of poor performances. People are leaving churches because of poor performances. Our country is falling apart because of poor performances.
We live in a conditional world!!
Because we were created in the image of God, "WHO IS LOVE", we are continually seeking "LOVE" whether we realize it or not. There is a need for love and acceptance within us. Because we are human and grow up in a conditional world, we seek love through performance and we give love according to performance.
One of the reasons we are all so tired is because of performing all day, day in and day out. We become disillusioned and begin to pull away from everything and everyone. We begin to think, "whatever". It just becomes too hard, so we disconnect. Some become depressed, some become resentful and some slip into indifference. The plan of Satan, by the way.
God placed us in this world and gave us GRACE to be who He wants us to be and GRACE to do what He wants us to do. We must become God pleasers and stop trying to please people. We tend to look at people through who we are, instead of who Jesus is.
In my last post, I wrote scripture from 1 Corinthians about the body. If I am an eye, I need to stop trying to please an ear by trying to be just like him or her. And we need to stop judging others in this way. We each were created to be our self not someone else. We must allow each other to be their part of the body and stop trying to turn them into who we think they should be.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:2amp "For just as you judge and criticize and condemn others, you will be judged and criticized and condemned, and in accordance with the measure you [use to] deal out to others, it will be dealt out again to you." If we aren't happy with the way we are being treated, maybe we need to take a look at how we are treating others. We need to remember the verse we learned as children, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If we want to be accepted, we need to accept. If we don't want to be criticized, we need to not criticize. Another verse.."we reap what we sow". What are we sowing. We need to look at our self, instead of the other person because we may just be getting what we are giving.
Just as the Jews were scattered, we, the Body of Christ are scattered, trying to be who we think someone expects us to be or we have dropped out completely because we can't accept the performance of the rest of the body. Either way the body is scattered.
Until the body of Christ is in it's place, doing what it was intended to do, and that is reflect Jesus, we will never reach this world. Every believer has been given Grace for his place in the body. We have got to stop disconnecting and come together or Jesus will not be seen in us.
We, the church are to be light in this dark world. But because of religion, works, performing, judging, and disconnecting, we are quenching the light. We who should be light are also searching for light.
At the start of this post, I ask the question...if you ever thought about what you want to leave behind when you leave this world?
We will leave behind what we give. Are we giving what we want to leave behind?
Connie
They all are centered in Love!! 1 John 8&16 say, "God is love".
Works and Grace...fear and faith...conditional love and unconditional love. These are very connected. There is works, fear and conditional love on the one hand and then there is Grace, faith and unconditional love on the other. Which one do you choose. Of course, we all would choose Grace, faith and unconditional love. With this being our choice, why do we see so much of the other?
God gave us free will and I am beginning to understand why. He doesn't want to force us to love Him. He wants us to want to love Him. In the process of growing, because we have free will, we make many mistakes (we sin much). We call it mistakes but it is sin. The Law was given to show us our sin. Because we are human, we will never be able to keep the law to perfection and God knew this. That is why out of His perfect Love, He gave His only Son, Jesus.
In verse 8 of 1 Peter, it says: "Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others] (amp)
This is what Jesus did for us, this is PURE GRACE. This is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!!
Yet, we live in a world filled with conditional love. This is the reason everything is falling apart around us. I don't think we even realize this. We all think we love and we do but it is very conditional. We seek love by our performance and give love according to the performance of others.
Love and acceptance are the two most wanted things in this world.
You have heard the saying, "the world is a stage and we are all actors". Well, that is us. It isn't just the unbelievers, it is also us, the believers.
Love and acceptance is based on performance. Look around, listen to people, listen to yourself. We are all critics. We judge performances all day every day. We give, we receive and accept and reject according to performance.
Marriages are being destroyed because of poor performances. Families are being torn apart because of poor performances. People are leaving churches because of poor performances. Our country is falling apart because of poor performances.
We live in a conditional world!!
Because we were created in the image of God, "WHO IS LOVE", we are continually seeking "LOVE" whether we realize it or not. There is a need for love and acceptance within us. Because we are human and grow up in a conditional world, we seek love through performance and we give love according to performance.
One of the reasons we are all so tired is because of performing all day, day in and day out. We become disillusioned and begin to pull away from everything and everyone. We begin to think, "whatever". It just becomes too hard, so we disconnect. Some become depressed, some become resentful and some slip into indifference. The plan of Satan, by the way.
God placed us in this world and gave us GRACE to be who He wants us to be and GRACE to do what He wants us to do. We must become God pleasers and stop trying to please people. We tend to look at people through who we are, instead of who Jesus is.
In my last post, I wrote scripture from 1 Corinthians about the body. If I am an eye, I need to stop trying to please an ear by trying to be just like him or her. And we need to stop judging others in this way. We each were created to be our self not someone else. We must allow each other to be their part of the body and stop trying to turn them into who we think they should be.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:2amp "For just as you judge and criticize and condemn others, you will be judged and criticized and condemned, and in accordance with the measure you [use to] deal out to others, it will be dealt out again to you." If we aren't happy with the way we are being treated, maybe we need to take a look at how we are treating others. We need to remember the verse we learned as children, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If we want to be accepted, we need to accept. If we don't want to be criticized, we need to not criticize. Another verse.."we reap what we sow". What are we sowing. We need to look at our self, instead of the other person because we may just be getting what we are giving.
Just as the Jews were scattered, we, the Body of Christ are scattered, trying to be who we think someone expects us to be or we have dropped out completely because we can't accept the performance of the rest of the body. Either way the body is scattered.
Until the body of Christ is in it's place, doing what it was intended to do, and that is reflect Jesus, we will never reach this world. Every believer has been given Grace for his place in the body. We have got to stop disconnecting and come together or Jesus will not be seen in us.
We, the church are to be light in this dark world. But because of religion, works, performing, judging, and disconnecting, we are quenching the light. We who should be light are also searching for light.
At the start of this post, I ask the question...if you ever thought about what you want to leave behind when you leave this world?
We will leave behind what we give. Are we giving what we want to leave behind?
Connie
WOW! What an awesome lesson. Why do we think that when someone isn't exactly like us we should tell them what to do and how they should be when the only thing we know is what we should be doing. We were created by THE CREATOR, I'm guessing He knew what He was doing.:) God made us all with different talents and gifts. When we are not operating in our gift we might miss something amazing God has for us to experience. so when we try to get other people to be more like we want them to be they might miss something that God has for them.
ReplyDeleteThere are many eyes and ears and arms and legs in the church, if all of the legs were operating as other parts of the body how would God's Word ever get outside of the building. We are all important parts no matter how big or small and we all have a purpose.
As believers we should LOVE each other for our function instead of trying to transform someone into something they are not supposed to be. Loving is the number one thing that we all have in common the difference is the way God created us to show it.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the GREATEST of these is LOVE" I Corinthians 13:13
Thank you so much for this post.
LOVE you so much,
Rachel
I just want you to know how wonderfully blessed I feel to have you and Rachel as my sister and my daughter God speaks mightily through both of you when yall write. His love flows from your words thank-you so much for being tender to His leading you are always an inspiration to all who read this blog.
ReplyDeleteI love you
mike
I am blessed by this! Yes, Yes, Yes! What you have described is a message on my heart, and I tend to get more frustrated and angry, and I love to read your eloquent words. And I'm challenged to live this....thank you, for such a powerful truth!
ReplyDeleteWhew! Took me a lotta thinkn' on this question Connie. Beautifully written post. To me, there is so much greater freedom in living with the change in focus from horizontal to vertical, if you know what I mean. I want to leave behind the proper image of YHWH to the world. In other words, as I walk and live and breath and speak and love and give - I want it to demonstrate Him. I want to leave behind His Image. Thank you for the post and causing me to analyze this concept even deeper.
ReplyDelete-Lora
Connie,
ReplyDeleteBecause of my move, I haven't been able to read our blogs until now. This subject is one of the greatest that our Father has given us, unconditional love!! There is only one source that provides this perfect love, it's Jesus. We can try all we want to love the right way and still are missing the boat. Jesus alone is the one that loves unconditionally. It's Him through us that gives us the ability to look at one another unconditionally. One of the greatest things that has happened in all of God's children's life that leads us to desire His love to work through us, is in what He has done for us. If we were to be judged by the same means we look at others, then we would never be forgiven. But because of God's unconditional love, He forgives. His love is greater than my wrong!!
I like what you said, we should all take a look at what He has done for us, then it could be easier for us to look at others a different way. God needed nothing from us for Him to love us, just as we should be with others. But the only way for that to happen will be for us to surrender to His authority and allow His love to work through us. I am convinced that God is capable to do what needs to be done for Him to work that out in us. In fact, He works daily through our life to develop that more and more each day. By removing us and inserting Him, He moves us closer to that finished product that He intends for us to be.
Philippians 1:6
God bless you in all He leads you to write,
Stan