I don't need your approval...

Love is sort of a theme for me. I asked God to help me get better at giving it because most of us give love how we’d like to get it, as opposed to how the other person needs to receive it. I wanted to love more people and improve my delivery. I wanted to look past my opinions and judgments and see what He sees.

I devoured books on love for a few years. Put myself under a pastor; love is his very nature. Asked for His eyes and heart and then came to a very sobering realization: you can love someone perfectly and they might never love you back because love is a choice.

He loves all of us every day without fail. He doesn’t get a break when He sleeps. He can’t unplug for few days while on vacation.  He can’t run away or make it stop…and while I get He is God and probably doesn’t need all that, I now understand the toll it can to take to love someone who is resistant. He being God does this on a grand, global scale day in and day out and never fails because He is Love.

So how can we do what He does in our own lives without wanting to cut ourselves or punch a face or eventually run away in frustration and hide? We are only human. We have limits. How do we give ourselves away and not lose who we are? Remain vulnerable in the face of resistant, wounded people that spite us for trying? I have found that I must love people from a place that comes from Him not from me, as previously discussed BUT I have also found a deep abiding truth…

 I don’t need your approval to be who He created me to be. He made me the way I am to reach someone you can’t and vice versa.

When you love someone from a place that comes from inside of you, your expectation is that they will eventually love you back but when the love comes from place that is His, it can be better, bigger, whole because it isn’t limited to my abilities.

I must admit that I am quite sure I still have A LOT of room for improvement. I know that the people I trust most are those that have proven themselves to me, directly. BUT, I also recognize that I give away love much more freely nowadays than I used to, especially to those at my church. It is a special place and I have found I trust those people more readily who chose to stay and surrender themselves to Him in that place. I have a desire now to brighten someone’s day no matter how my heart feels. Bend in ways I didn’t before not because I couldn’t but because I was unwilling.

I am still careful not to reveal all of myself outside my circle of trust. Many people think they know me when, they haven’t even scratched the surface. Not sure whether that’s the right or wrong way but I am sure that when He asks, I will be willing to bare myself as needed.

I listened awhile back to a teaching, The 12 Proofs of Love:

1. Passion and/or desire to give.
2. Desire to protect.
3. Passion and/or desire to please.
4. Willingness to change and/or adapt.
5. Willingness to confront and preserve.
6. Willingness to listen.
7. Willingness to obey.
8. Ability to endure.
9. Inability to ignore.
10. Investment of time.
11. Pursuit.
12. Inability to betray.

He said (can’t remember who the dude was unfortunately) some enlightening things:

• Love is not understanding someone.
• Love is more than a feeling of desire.
• The Holy Spirit is the factory of love.
• Nobody loves all the time.

The one that struck home the most for me: what satan cannot stop, he accelerates so that you cannot enjoy the present because you are rushing around. Loving more proficiently means no rushing around. It means telling that person they can go in front of you (the Lord has to give me grace when I am driving). It means telling someone they look nice. It means holding a hand. It means a smile at stranger. It is a million little things that let the people around you, no matte where you are that you care about their happiness.

Anyway… I guess that answers the question, what would happen if you quit trying to save the world and just helped the person in front of you that was plaguing me yesterday.