Unconditional Love

Transcript

Hi Everyone, welcome back to the Living on Prayer podcast! I’m Emily and as always I’m glad you’re here with me for today’s episode. We’re coming towards the end of the first series in this podcast which has been titled “God’s Love” and these episodes within the series have focused on various aspects of God’s Love such as forgiveness, grace, mercy, love in action, and spiritual gifts but for today’s episode I want to talk about Unconditional Love and what that really looks like from both a spiritual perspective and a worldly perspective. It seems like this would be a fairly easy topic to discuss and maybe for some it might be, but it was actually one of the toughest for me to learn and then put into practice. I will say that I do hope that all of us feel like we have at least one person in our life that we GIVE unconditional love to. I also really hope that we all feel like we have at least one person that we RECEIVE unconditional love from as well. These may not be the same person and that’s ok but I do really hope we all have this in our life. I’d love this to be true for all of us because that was God’s intent when He created us in His image and likeness. You know it seems like the world works against the concept of unconditional love, though doesn’t it. While I think the intentions might be there with most people when relationships get started, the conditions do seem to pop up eventually down the road. Things that seem to really cause issues and constraints, conditions on our relationships, conditions on our love…the biggest ones seem to be like money or communication issues or children or other family issues or the breaking of trust type issues for example. But whatever the conditions are they seem to pop up for us in relationships so that’s why I want to break this topic of unconditional love down today.

So first, let me start with the spiritual perspective of unconditional love. There are so many scripture references to God’s love by the way. I’ve used a few of them in earlier episodes and I’ll give some more here too but let me first say that when it comes to God’s love, His love is unconditional. And let me just say that again a better way. God’s love is unconditional, meaning it has NO CONDITIONS, none whatsoever. He doesn’t put stipulations, qualifications, prerequisites, or provisions on his love. It’s open to all of us, Christians and non-Christians alike. He created all of us and He loves us, even if we don’t choose to accept Him and I think some people forget that God does that. That God continues to love His creations, all of His creations, humans and the world and everything in it, no matter what Satan tries to do or say. No matter how Satan tries to manipulate the world and everyone and everything in it. No matter how God’s creations continue to evolve in sin over time, God still continues to pour out His love on His creations even if His creations continue to reject Him time and time again. God is an ever-loving God! His love is unconditional. God is also a consistent God who does not change. The world changes. The generations change. Humans change. Humans change their minds, their hearts, their actions. But God does not change, not ever. So let me say it again one more time – God’s love is unconditional. It is without conditions. He loves all of us, all of His creations, everything in this world because He created it all. He has no stipulations, no provisions on what He loves and doesn’t love. He will not pour out His love only on one thing and not another. That is not God! 

 Jeremiah Chapter 31, Verse 3 “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

1 John Chapter 3, Verse 1 “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”

1 John Chapter 3, Verse 16 “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us.”

There are so many more scripture references to describe God’s love I could go on and on but what I also think is important to the scripture perspective of unconditional love is the how to’s. How to give unconditional love like Christ. The best way to give unconditional love is to follow His instructions. And in the scriptures He tells us how to love. And I’m not going to lie and tell you that loving someone in this life and on this earth is easy but I’m going to tell you what the scriptures tell us we should try to do. It says we should love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, our neighbors, and our enemies who persecute us as well. And yeah that last one is probably the hardest I know. It’s hard enough to love each other as Christians. It’s then hard to love our neighbors. Do we even know our neighbors anymore? But then He takes it a step further and says to not only love each other, those we know are Christians, and then love those neighbors we might only kinda sorta know, but then to also love those who are our enemies. Those we probably hate, those who we can’t stand the sight of, those who have hurt us, and who might be out to get us. Yeah, that’s a lot to ask of us, isn’t it? But if we are to truly love like Christ then we are to understand his instructions and to try to act like Him. Loving unconditionally means we love all without putting conditions on it and that means we aren’t conditioning our love to just those we like or those we love and care about and not those that have hurt us. And lastly, the scriptures also tell us that when we love we should do it honorably, and with kindness and patience and with protection and trust and perseverance. Not with pride or anger or envy or scorekeeping. 

John Chapter 13, Verse 34 “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”

Matthew Chapter 5, Verse 44 “But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven”

1 Corinthians Chapter 13, Verses 4-7 “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up nor loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

Romans Chapter 12, Verses 9-12 “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring each other. Never be lazy but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble and keep on praying.”

I think the scriptures make it pretty clear that we should work hard to love each other. To love each other genuinely and honorable and with hope. That doesn’t mean we should hold on to what is wrong with each other or what is wrong with the situations or the relationships. It clearly states to hate what is wrong and hold tightly to what is good so let’s talk a little bit about how we can handle this a bit more in today’s world, in the practical sense.

As I mentioned at the start of this episode, unconditional love was one of the hardest aspects of God’s love for me to understand and put into practice. Forgiveness wasn’t easy for me either but unconditional love just didn’t resonate with me after my grandfather died. And I guess it was because I felt left. I felt abandoned. I know that might sound silly because he died, he didn’t just up and leave me. But I felt like God took him from me so in my young mind that felt like God didn’t really love me unconditionally. I also knew that my grandfather was the most God loving person I knew and that if he had been given a choice by God to go or stay, and yeah I know we might not get that choice but it was something I thought about, but if he had been given a choice that he would have gone to heaven. So I felt like in a way he might have made a choice to leave me and that made me feel like maybe he didn’t love me unconditionally either. You know, my grief doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me I guess but like I’ve said before, I’m a heart person and my heart was so broken when he died. I was sad and lonely and hurt and there was a hole that couldn’t be filled by anyone. And I took it out on God, I really did. I internalized it first for a long time and then I lashed out for a period of time too. Lots of mistakes were made and people were hurt and in the long run I just ended up hurting myself the most because all of that time and energy that I wasted set me back from what God had intended for my life and purpose. And I can see that now. 

It took me a lot of years to mess up and a lot more years to learn from those messes and to mature and to grow, to listen, and then to want to help others. Every bit of my growth and development was because of God. Every single step, every milestone, every win, everything I’ve learned is all because He loves me so unconditionally. He never gave up on me when He should have, when I told Him to, when I left Him, when I told Him I was going to leave everyone else. He just sat there and waited for me. I truly don’t deserve Him. I don’t. But I serve Him now and I will continue to do my best to serve Him and honor Him because He loves me like no one else.

Some of what I learned from the practical side seemed so logical at first, almost like common sense when I started receiving it but again it wasn’t something I could accept right away. The first thing was that unconditional love starts with giving yourself love first. Self-acceptance. Knowing who you are, having self-worth, understanding your needs and caring about yourself and being able to give yourself grace and forgiveness. If you can’t practice that, if you can’t do that, if you don’t have that then how can you practice unconditional love with others. This was a weakness for me. I didn’t love myself. I had messed up so badly in my life. I had made so many mistakes and hurt so many others that I really couldn’t even look myself in the mirror. But yet I did love others. The problem is that we project our own insecurities, our own worries, our own concerns onto those we love. So my biggest fear which was abandonment, being left by someone again, and unfortunately it was constantly being projected on everyone, especially the men I cared about most in my life. And if I thought for even a second that they might leave me well then I would try to sabotage the situation. So I had to learn who I was, what made me unhealthy and insecure, what needs I had and then realize that I have a God who made me in His image and I had to take all of this to Him and I dropped it all there at His feet. I literally took this huge load of crap, my insecurities and my sadness, my hurts and neglects, all of it and dumped it all and I had to say  “Lord, I need your help please”, “give me peace”, “take it all away”, “forgive me for all of this please”, “I can’t do this anymore without you” and I did it all with such earnest, heartfelt intent and I left it all there and got up from His feet and wiped away my tears and was able to walk away so much lighter and healthier than before. I’m not going to say it happened overnight. But I will say that the process of giving yourself love and accepting who you are is a freeing process and allowing God to be the one who carries it all for you, the one you leave it with is where you find your peace. He loves you and knows you and created you. He wants you to love yourself like He does too. So the first place to start is within.

Then once we can love ourselves unconditionally and with God’s help then it’s time to move on to practicing unconditional love itself on others. And what that means is putting into practice the art of loving others without wanting anything in return. In some small way each day or each week, practice doing something for someone else without any strings attached. These are ways to get used to what unconditional love feels like. Easy examples are holding a door open for someone without expecting them to say thank you and if they don’t then not getting irritated about it or letting someone over in traffic and same thing, not expecting anything in return. Another example is telling someone you love them without waiting for a response and again not getting irritated if they don’t respond. That’s the unconditional part of doing for others. It’s the not expecting anything in return. Maybe leaving a nice note for a co-working or neighbor, maybe even anonymously, telling them they’re doing a great job or their yard looks great. 

 And the last thing to really notice about ourselves with unconditional love is not just the action but how we feel about it. It we feel like we’re just going through the motions or if we feel like there’s some negativity tied to the action or if we feel like the other person owes us something then we aren’t loving them unconditionally. So we need to pay attention to not just our actions but also our intentions to know if we really are loving unconditionally. 

 So I want to point out something here about what I’ve said in case you haven’t noticed the obvious. Everything is about us having unconditional love. I haven’t said anything about receiving unconditional love. Why is that? Why am I not talking about how to receive unconditional love? Because that’s not in our control. We can’t make others give us unconditional love. What we can do is be the best version of ourselves to make others want to give it to us. So then how do we know we’re receiving it? I’d love to give you that answer but then I’d be God because I’d be able to understand the intent of others’ hearts. This is where trust and faith come into play with all of us as humans. It’s also where we have to lean into our relationships with God and ask Him for help with who we have relationships with in our lives. Let Him help guide us to the right people and resources and away from the wrong people and resources. If we aren’t leaning into Him then we’re more likely to get pulled into the wrong relationships because Satan loves to mess with folks. He just loves to watch the soap operas and dramas and fights that occur daily on this earth. It just makes him so happy! My advice is don’t let Satan pull you into his web. Let God direct you to people and resources and if you aren’t where you should be right now then let God get you out of there and over to the right place and with the right people. He’s very good at that by the way. I am a huge testimony to that! 

So as I’m closing us out today let me just say that what I learned the most from my life experiences so far is that God loves me unconditionally and that He truly is all I need. And if I have Him in my corner then I can do anything. I really can. If we have Christ, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Philippians 4:13, my favorite verse. I’ll say it a million times before I leave this earth because I love it and I really believe it. He loves us all, without conditions. And look, I know you love someone out there. It’s hard to love without conditions and that’s ok folks, it really is. We can try though. We can try every day to be Christ-like. Understanding this concept of unconditional love, of loving without stipulations or constraints is something to understand and be aware of when you think about your relationships. The intent might be there and that’s so great. But God’s love and in turn, our own love, is not some theoretical concept. It’s a reality. And any love that isn’t expressed through the giving of self, practical action, and sacrifice isn’t love.

As always, I want to close us out with a prayer. This is from the book of Ephesians, Chapter 1, Verses 3-8 “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.”

This is just a very small reminder of God’s love for each of us. He really does love you, just remember that! And he’s your biggest fan, I speak from experience here. I really do! Thanks again for joining today. Always glad you’re here. Until next time, be safe everyone. We’ll talk again soon.