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"Here’s an important key for us all to grasp. We don’t need to practice love to get love. We are already loved."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 136.
The world has done an amazing job of ruining so many of the important concepts that we need in order to feel secure in our God-given position as a victor. Take for example the concept of love. We have been taught by so much of this world that we have to earn any love that might be part of our lives. What a sad and warped view of something as important as the issue of love.
From God's perspective, what the world has taught is so far from the truth. Love isn't earned. Love is given. In that respect, love is just like our identities. We don't need to work to find our identities, our identities are given by God. Somehow we have been co opted by this world in some important areas of our life in ways that make it harder and harder to stay out of victim thinking.
If we live under the impression that we have to practice love in order to be loved then there will be times when we will feel very unlovable due to the fact that our ability to show love is not working as powerfully as we would like. It is the same with our identities. If we live under the lie that we have to do in order to figure out how to be, we will find disappointment will linger in ways that will usher in victim thinking from time to time.
From God's perspective, love is something so radically different from our performance based teachings on the subject. He isn't waiting for us to clean up our act or to figure out how to better love before He loves us. Love based on condition isn't really a love that is worth working towards, let alone sacrifice for.
Today's Bible reading is a familiar one.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (NIV)
The New Testament of the Bible was originally written in Greek. Greek is a very precise language, much more so on a word for word basis than English. The word "love" in today's reading is a prime example. In English I might say, "I love hotdogs" to express my fondness of this particular food and then use the same word to express my devotion to my wife by saying, "I love my wife." It is up to the listener to be able to distinguish that my fondness for hotdogs isn't the same as my devotion to my wife. See how, even down to the actual language we use, we are being trained to view love in a way that can cause us problems in our world?
In the Greek there are at least three words that can be translated as "love." Each one gives a different view of what the speaker is trying to communicate. In the case of our Bible verse for today, the word love has to do with loving in a way that has no conditions. The reader of this passage in the original language would know that God loved us in a way as to not have any strings attached to that love. And, that love was so great that He would sacrifice His own son to express that love, again without any stipulations for showing that love.
Unconditional love is something that we really have a hard time coming to terms with in our world. As I said earlier, we have been taught, either purposely or unintentionally, that love is earned. At the very least we might believe and act on the belief that I can't love someone unless they first love me. We have been shown that there are a lot of conditions to being loved and we better live up to those conditions or we will feel the fullness of the lack of love in our lives. This is such a victimizing way to live out love in our lives. Victim thinking can't help but to be a part of our lives when we live the lie that performance is the foundation of any loving relationship.
That's what I mean when I said earlier that we don't have to practice love to be loved. We are suppose to gravitate to the unconditional love God has for us and learn how to recognize that kind of love so that we can live it out in our lives as well. Problem is that we have a pretty well established habit of conditional love as part of our upbringing. That's why it is so important for us to know who we are so that we can live the kinds of love God gives to us whether we realize it or not.
All I can suggest is that you live your life today surrounded by the kind of love God speaks of in our John 3:16 reading. He has no conditions on His love for you. It is there for the taking. That's the beauty of our position as a victor that God has made us to be. We are children of a loving King and the love He has for us is unlimited and unconnected to anything we might do or say today. Let that fact be what sets you apart as you are put into situations where you will have the opportunity to reflect that kind of love to those around you today.
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