I asked God to help me love better and then He showed me something and I’m going to share it with you. I GUARANTEE that this will bless you too!
Let’s talk real… I was thinking about my husband and how he has frustrated me so many times over the years. I’ll give a simple example. Stay with me… I promise I’m going somewhere good. One day we were riding together and somehow in conversation a landmark came up. I mentioned that the last time I rode by this location there was construction and how all the buildings on that block had been torn down. My husband responded with certainty that I was incorrect and that there was something else in the spot. Contrary to the old me, I did not go back and forth with him. I just said alright and let it go. Well it happened that we ended up riding past the location that we were talking about earlier and I saw him realize that he was wrong but I didn’t even acknowledge it. When we got home he said to me, I’m sorry sometimes I don’t remember things right. I asked him how long this had been going on and prayed for him. When I spoke to God later that night I was frustrated and brought up how I was always the kind one, and the peaceful one and still being encouraging to him even when he isn’t towards me. I cried because I felt like it wasn’t fair. Then I repented, cried some more and went to bed.
I woke up the next morning and I was talking to God and asking why my husband can’t love me right (I felt convicted for that -I was being a brat) I repented and confessed that I can have a self-centered way of seeing the world and how things affect me but that it wasn’t lost on me how much I could be affecting others. Then I was reminded that in that moment, although I may have been justified, there have been times when I wasn’t. We all know the scripture “Love is patient, kind…” (1Corinthians 13:4-7) but, I find that the reasons why we don’t or can’t love right are “we things” or “me things”. These reasons have nothing to do with the recipient. WE just cannot love right in ourselves! We have made love about feelings when God made it truth. Love is truth! Love is foundational.
Thinking about my example, I have wasted so much time and energy trying to figure out why people can’t understand how I understand and why they don’t see things the way I see them. How come nobody else can seem to treat me the way I treat them or show the same simple courtesy? Some times in our frustration we call this common sense, but what if there is no such thing as common sense? What if it’s just your God-given sense, that’s different for everyone else and what if it’s based on our gifts, callings, assignments and EXPERIENCES? I think about all the time I’ve wasted trying to teach others how to do what I seem to do very easily or even naturally, but how it never seems to work exactly right. How I’ve allowed my heart to be broken by my misplaced expectations of others to be like me and to treat me the way I treat them. But what if they’re not supposed to be able to do what you do or be the way that you are? I discarded the prescribed (ordained) experiences that gave me my testimony and made my election sure. In the words of Taylor Swift… “It’s me guys, I’m the problem it’s me”! It’s me who has underestimated or not truly understood who God made ME. I have devalued how much of THAT influences and affects how I view the world, situations and people. It directly affects how I perceive everything.
This misunderstanding has caused me to “feel some type of way” about people and that type of way is not love, but, if I cannot love them then what will cover their (multitude of) sin? If you’re like me and have held people accountable (guilty) for not being like you. I pray this revelation freed you because it’s time to free (forgive) them too. I freed my husband and it has helped me to heal and to love him better. After all that is how the world will know us (by the love we have for one another).
*Devotion – Psalm 139:14 / Ephesians 2:10 / 1Peter 3:8
I love you, but not more than God.
Lovingkind Counsel 