Walking In Love

I have made many mistakes regarding guys throughout my life, giving my love away too easily, while hopelessly wanting to be loved… and that’s where I had it all wrong… I had no idea what LOVE really IS. And I am afraid that if I never left home and come on this wonderful adventure with God… I never would have known. 

See, all my life I have felt love from others, but more of a response by being happy or funny, sweet, giving, loving or by just trying to be the perfect girl, daughter, sister, friend, worker, nanny, aunt, granddaughter, Christian, etc.  I believed love came from people pleasing. “If I do everything in my will to make you happy, then how could you not love me?” That was the question I was living.

And when people did not show me love, that just meant I wasn’t trying hard enough, I wasn’t being something enough! I wasn’t enough. 

WOW, what a burden to carry! Just writing this makes me exhausted because I actually LIVED this way MOST of my life and until very recently… and sometimes still when my spirit forgets the truth and reverts to old ways.

What is most fascinating about the lie I was living is that I thought Love was conditional, based on me and my performance. But Love is NOT conditional. The Bible says that God IS LOVE and what did God do? He paid the highest price that has ever been paid by sending His perfect, blameless, pure son to DIE for my sins not only so I could have eternal life but to living a beautiful, amazing life on earth only by Walking In His Unconditional Love. By living in the Freedom that His love brings. He sent His son to die for my many sins thousands of years before I would actually commit them just so I could one day realize what Love actually IS and not to just know but to Walk In That Love. His love. Perfect, Unconditional, Real Love. Love that has been before the Creation of the world. Love that I was waiting on but little did I know is timeless and has actually been waiting on ME. 

God says in The Bible “I knew you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart for me before you were born; I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5

“all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalms 139:16

What I didn’t realize is that before I was BORN I was LOVED. Before I even sinned I was died for as an act of love.  

There is a song I would listen to but didn’t particularly like because I didn’t understand it until now. It says: 

I didn’t like this song because I still thought Love was a man that was going to pick me from all the other girls in the world. He would love Jesus and love me and that love would be easy. I know all you married people are shaking your heads  and screaming “NO!!!” right now. Believe me,  I praise God He has shown me those thoughts are so naive and I am so thankful He spared me from marrying expecting an easy, perfect love that doesn’t exist! 

God’s love was so sacrificial. There was nothing easy about sending a perfect Son to die for the most imperfect people who would not even appreciate perfect love given to them and instead seek it in an imperfect human. Lord have mercy! 

See I came on this World Race and God put me with 5 girls who are all completely different from the other. I have spent every waking and non waking hour with these girls for the last 3 months. There is no alone time. There is not a moment where one of us is not you sacrificing and compromising our wants for another’s. This is not always easy. But it is so possible because it all comes down to loving one another. And you can’t fake this love because it will run out. You can’t will it. You can’t want to love someone enough. You must know how to love someone. And the only way we can truly Love each other is by getting real, sacrificial, unconditional Love from the source, from God alone. And we are not perfect, we fail a lot, but we have God to run back to, to fill us up with His perfect love so we can extend the Love we’ve been given to each other. 

In Ephesians 5:1 God reminds us “to be imitators of God, as beloved children.” We can’t love unconditionally if we don’t know His unconditional love. And once we know and feel this love, only then can we “Walk In Love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” Only then can we give up ourselves for each other. And that is Love. 

I thought love was a human man, coming in to change me, my life, my future… but love is so much more than that. Love is sacrificing. Love is selfless. Love is patient and kind. Love isn’t doing what is easy but is moving beyond our selves and taking care of someone else, putting someone else first… 

To love like God. To give of ourselves, our time, our God-given talents, like God gave His only Son, as Christ gave himself for us. 

Since starting this adventure I have truly felt God’s love for me like I never have before. I have let go of all the hurt from my past relationships that were not love. I have run from people pleasing and into the loving arms of Jesus. Just the way I am. Right where I am. I have forgiven the people who have hurt me and I have asked God for forgiveness in seeking love from everywhere but Him. His perfect love. I have seen His love tangibly for me through the peace I have found only in Him. From being stripped from the comforts and home and being surrounded by 5 girls all the time who are just getting to know me and who get to see all of me… the good, bad and ugly… my fears, my messy past, my hopes for the future… and I have seen God’s unconditional love through them as they have shared the Love they have been given by Him to me. 

I know one day that man that I pray for will walk in my life and He, too, will show God’s love to me, but not because I convince him I am worthy of loving, because I need his love, but only because He, too, has received God’s perfect love and he can give some of it away to me. 

And I no longer expect easy, perfect love from a marriage, but the same sacrificial love God showed me and the same sacrificial love I am giving and receiving from these 5 beautiful women every day. That imperfect man’s love will just be icing on the cake of the perfect love I already have and feel! 

In the meantime and for the rest of my life I will Walk In Love as the Beloved child of God that I am. No more people pleasing to feel loved. I can just Love because I am already Loved. And I pray this for you too. That you, too, can Walk In Love, of God’s perfect, unconditional, sacrificial Love. And you will be an imitator of God, Walking In Love, as His Beloved. 

Love,

Whitney