LOVING MY FATHER

“We love him, because he first loved us“

1 John 4:19 KJV

Sometimes we forget that God loved us first. We did not have to prove anything to Him. He loved us when we ignored his warnings, when we did what we wanted, when we fell short, when we thought we disappointed him. God was literally waiting with open arms to love us back to him. Why?

Because he loves us; Sounds so simple yet so hard to fully grasp and apply to your life. Our first examples of love came from our family. Some of us may have come from backgrounds of people loving us unconditional without feeling like we have to prove that. While there are those of us who just lived a different life. We spent a lot of time fighting abandonment, rejection, low self esteem and feeling unworthy. We thought people only loved us if we could do something from them. Your perception of love and where it came from can date back to something that seemed so small.

My perception of love dates back to at least kindergarten. I remember watching my father and step mom fight and get back together. That laid a perception of you have to fight for love and so many false beliefs. Also it was because my family didn’t understand how I understood love and being placed in the role of a parent at a young age. My childhood was snatched with babysitting and cooking dinner as early as 12 years old. My mother understood love as gifts when my language was affirmation and physical touch. So, I seek love from boys. Yes, because boys were affectionate from a young age and very affirming.

Take sometime to ask God where did your perception of love start?

I thought in order to get love I had to give up something. But with God, his love comes freely without an expectation of you loving him back. He hopes that his love will overcome you and get you in line with him and recriprocate but he does it knowing that your free will could override that. I want you to let that sink in for a moment. He loves you knowing that you could choose to not love him back

How often do we do that with anyone?

Some people’s first mind is my kids no matter what I am going to love them. What about your spouse? What about your mother in law? What about that cousin, yes her?

Its not the same why its because we give what was given to us. So, when we receive Gods overwhelming unconditional love it will overflow into us loving God. We all have a love language that makes us feel loved. I like to say so does God and I have found a few. Feel free to add more. One of them is to be in relationship.

God desires a personal relationship with you, one where you spend time with him, commune with him, talk to him. worship all that. This is how he knows you love him. The second one that people talk about the most is obedience. Obedience to God is the ultimate love language. But you cant have obedience without relationship. See how that works.

In my mind, God chases us down with his love, we form a bond and relationship. God loves on us proves his love, fellowships with us and then because they love has overtaken us we begin this lifelong journey of obedience. As time goes on we get better at listening and better at obeying. God gives us a lifetime of mind blowing moments. I mean mind blowing. Our prayer request get answered, we find out that God isnt religious, we learn his nature and He becomes a true companion.

Then eventually this love because something he tells us to take to other people so they can also experience that love. So here is me planting a seed of love in you to let you know that you can really have a good relationship with your father. He is waiting on you to answer the call, open the door and clear the lines. Its so important that we allow His love to overwhelm us. Today I want you to take sometime to sit quiet before the Lord with a notebook and ask God one simple question: “How much do you love me?”

Scriptures on Love: 1 Cor. 16:4; 1 Peter 4:8; Ephesians 4:32

-Nakeisa J.

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