Relationally if we expect our mate to give us love then we must first allow them to receive (our) love. Yet I wonder how many people have grown up never really experiencing true love, or agape love, as the Bible calls it. I call it "in-spite of" love. I think there's three kinds of love: "IF" love, "BECAUSE" love, and "IN SPITE OF" love. Most people have a handle on the first two, but few really understand the third. I love you IF you do/act/perform a certain way. Or, I love you BECAUSE you did/said/acted a cert
ain way. Not true love folks. True love says I love you in spite of your words, or actions, or shortcomings. I just love you for you. I accept you without reservation or justification.How many of us grew up feeling we needed to earn love? Perhaps that is why we are so relationally bankrupt as a society today. Skyrocketing divorce, failed relationships, family breakdowns-unconditional love loves unconditionally, and it overcomes so many relational obstacles. But if we learned we need to earn love then we don't except love until we feel worthy, and our human condition leaves us feeling unworthy. So we never learn to just accept love, so we never learn to give love, to love unconditionally, even as we are unconditionally loved.
I think of times in relationships when I've loved and felt rejected, and I remember how painful that was, and I realized an incredibly painful truth. If indeed there is a God, and if indeed He loved us enough to send his only son to die for the sins of this world- your sin and mine- and if indeed his only condition to that love and forgiveness is our acceptance, can you try to imagine how painful His love must be by the wholesale rejection of this world? Can you imagine that each time someone chooses not to believe in Him, chooses to reject His love, the pain it must cause Him? And still He loves- Agape love, in spite of us. God, please allow me to accept your love and learn to love like you.
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