This morning is the morning where God brought clarity to a lifelong fear of mine.  If you’ve been reading my blog this week you know the struggle about love.  I’m a pretty persistent guy staying with a topic until I (we) get to the bottom of it.  I may have been wrong when the findings come out, but that is never the problem.  I just want to find where the truth of something is.  This morning, God brought together several pieces to this love topic and I think I actually “get it” now.  Let me proceed.

My Bible reading this morning was II Corinthians 1-3.  In these chapters Paul is talking to the people of Corinth about supporting one another in healthy ways and doing something about the wrongs of those who are in the midst of sin.  He’s using his own relationship with them as well as their relationship with God to spur them into action.  Joyce Meyer adds a piece at this point about her own past struggle not feeling like her husband ever supported her when she was struggling.  She finally got to the point realizing it wasn’t her husband that was the problem.  It was actually her and her relationship with herself and with God.  She was looking for what she needed in man rather than in God and herself.  Coupled with all of this I’m doing the activities in the book: The Nature of Freedom.  Today was to write the negatives I say about myself and what God’s counter to them would be.  I wrote:  sin–created in the image of God; mistake–on purpose; unwanted–wanted; disgrace–proud; unlovable–loved;  baby–strong;  weak–gifted;  unworthy–worthy;  worthless–valuable.

As I continued to read the scripture in II Cor. 3 Joyce explained in a passage about how man confuses religion with relationship.  We tend to serve God through religious activities instead of building a strong relationship with Him.  God desires for us to serve Him out of a healthy relationship with Him rather than serving God to hopefully build the relationship (as I’ve done).  In all of this God suddenly brought clarity to me about love.  Love is relationship–plain and simple. It isn’t a list of responsibilities to demonstrate love or a relationship.

After making the list of how I’ve seen myself and countering it with what I know about how God sees me I was able to see that God has been wanting me to see myself from his list of characteristics.  I have to tell you that it was like–MY GOD, this is me???  My response to me was–yes, this IS me.  It is the me God created in the first place and the new me He gave through Christ’s personal sacrifice.  All the beliefs I’d acquired early in my childhood were finally exposed as lies.  Isn’t that unbelievable?–yet true.

God has never intended for any of us to live with such lies.  Satan has used sin as a darkness to keep us hidden from God’s truth.  I hope this makes sense to those who read it.  God is wanting each of us to know it is His intent for us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31).  Loving ourselves is where we are to start and this means having a healthy relationship with ourselves.  That is God intended.  I can do this now.  I do feel set free in this arena.  I hope you find this freedom for yourself if you struggle in this area as I always have.  To God be the Glory–great things He has done!