Growing in Love

I’ve learned that truly loving people is not about shaping them into the ideal person you want them to be. I’ve been guilty of trying to transform someone into my image of him or her and cloaking this in the cover of me loving and helping them. Often we want to help, and by help I mean offer our suggestions for change and improvement, because it’s more about us than it is about the person. It would benefit me and our relationship if you would think like this, see like this, operate like this. But to see someone just for who they are and love them right where they are—that’s love.

God’s love is like this. It isn’t conditional, based upon you being and becoming the person He desires you to be. He offers it freely and before you even have the opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate that it even exists just for you. What God demonstrates to us over and over again is that love is powerful when it is received. He offers it, but we are the recipients of it. And when we allow ourselves to receive His love, effectual change is inevitable.

I’m learning the power of being invited in rather than bulldozing my way in. It’s all about being intentional today. I got a lot wrong yesterday. But I can choose intentionality today. Encounters with two people recently showed me how I’m growing in love.

It’s all about being intentional today. I got a lot wrong yesterday. But I can choose intentionality today.

I made the massive mistake of sending a long message - you know the one that guys screenshot and say "I'm not reading that" type of message. That one. I wanted to encourage this young man in growing in his character and preserving his future. My exhortation completely backfired. He didn't receive my words the way I intended, and after I reread them, I could see why. Instead of defending myself, I simply apologized and acknowledged how my words weren't my intention. I could have tried to explain more, but I realized that what I wanted to offer him was something that he would not be able to receive from me. And more, my input had never been invited; I never extended the politeness of asking if he was open to hearing it in the first place.

My second encounter was new for me. I can’t think of a time where I had a vested interest in a person that I did not try to get him or her on my side when we disagreed on an important issue. This was different. I was just open to who this person was, how he thought, what he had experienced, how he saw life, and I just wanted him to be exactly who he was. I didn’t want to try to change him into my image of what I thought he should be. I just wanted to know him and welcome him to know me, and out of the transparency of revealing our authentic selves, allow us to discover unknowns that could radically transform us both.

Isn’t this what God invites us to do – to know Him and out of that knowing be transformed and out of our transformation make Him known to others (John 17:3, Ephesians 1:17-19, Ephesians 5:1-2, Jeremiah 9:23-24). I’ve come to learn that when I seek to know you, then I can truly love you. I now believe that this is the way of love.

Can you identify times in your life where you were seeking to love but the root of it was really to change them for your benefit?

One of the affirmations I wrote to help me love without seeking to change is below; feel free to use it if it will help you too:

I allow others to be. To be themselves. To be messy and imperfect as am I . I allow others to become as I myself become.

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