You can be the smartest or most talented person on the planet, but if you lack love, you’ll eventually flounder. Eventually, the resulting brokenness will sabotage your long term health and wholeness in life. This is because living in the flow of love is oxygen for your spiritual and emotional heart. Without it, you begin to erode.
Everything is affected by the dimension of love that flows through you: Your family feels the effects of it, or the lack thereof. Your work environment, church and community are all affected by your ability to live in what love produces.
Yet none of this is possible unless receiving and dwelling in the power of God’s love becomes a value in your life. Only then will the heart make room for what God’s love can do in your heart.
Knowing You Are Loved Changes Everything
When I think about my own journey, I thought I was fine, until the lack of love in my heart manifested a number of difficult struggles. Yet everything changed when my heart began to experience the depth of his love. My problems didn’t go away, but I discover how much God’s love became the new anchor for me as I navigated through healing and personal growth.
Like John said, I began to “know and rely on the love God has for us.” (1 John 4:16) Love was no longer an option, it was the main life source of God’s affection and presence in my life.
When I awakened to this reality, I was also sobered as to how much people, and even believers, live on a daily basis without a real sense of love in their hearts. They don’t feel the worth, value and empowerment that God’s love provides. Most people are just learning to cope–attempts to survive without the work of love in their hearts.
Is that you? If so, you need to be encouraged as to what being love can bring into your life. You don’t have to live in survival anymore, nor do you need to strive to earn love You are loved–deeply. It’s just a matter of learning to receive it.
I could go on and on, but here are four amazing blessings I discovered when I began to experience the Father’s love for me in my heart. These are just the beginning of what love can produce, because there is so much more. But allow me to share 4 that can develop in your life when you allow God to love your heart.
When you truly know that you are loved:
1. You Know Someone Has Your Back
On a daily basis, this is what you and I need to know.
Your heart needs assurance that when things get challenging, you’re not alone. God’s love tells you, “someone’s got your back.” When push comes to shove, you got backup.
So many people were raised feeling, “no one’s got my back,” so they often give into thinking that says, “I have to do life all on my own” or “I don’t need anyone, because no one is there for me anyway.”
We need to know that when we can’t seem to pay the bills, someone’s got our back.
When we get rejected in relationship, someone’s got our back.
When someone’s got my back, I gain courage and confidence. It is why tribes are so important for believers. We need the band of brothers and sisters that exercise the comradery and empowerment that being knit together brings.
The problem is, so many feel disconnected to the Father’s love, so everyone lives in survival, rather than looking out for each other. We look to only protect ourselves and live in survival mode. That’s because we lack the Father’s love and the revelation that He has our back. Therefore, we have nothing to give others in relational backing.
So it all starts with getting healed in the Father’s love for you; that He has your back. He believes in you and He’s backing your steps of faith with His power.
If I know God has my back, I have the boldness. The “what ifs” and the pressure filled thoughts don’t have entry. I don’t have to be perfect.
Millions struggle with the sense of abandonment because somebody left you. It usually goes back to mom and dad. But it goes to love relationships and even church leaders. They didn’t know how to step up to the plate in your life.
Dads are abandoning their families in a massive plague. Their own brokenness is kicking up. They don’t know what to do, because they weren’t father. Dad didn’t have his back. I know for a fact that if a man knows another man has his back, everything changes.
People are struggling today because a key leader left the picture. A good friend just kind of left you hanging and you carry that abandonment.
When love comes, God says “I’ve got your back.”
Jesus even said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
God says, “‘I am a father to the fatherless.” So we know He has radar for people who feel left alone and lack that relational protection. He wants to be your safety, your covering and protection.
2. You Have Nothing to Prove
This means the pressure’s off.
In my broken-heartedness, not knowing the Father’s love for me, I used to perform and strive to be perfect as a way to have worth. I felt every day I had something to prove to everybody that I’m somebody. Once I know God’s love me, I get that He has my back and there is nothing to prove.
When I began to experience the depth of the Father’s love for me, the pressure of trying to prove myself was removed. There is nothing to prove when you realize that Dad is already proud of you.
This doesn’t mean I sit back and do nothing. Not at all. It means the extra energy wasting on nervousness, anxiety, worry and trying to please now get put into the excitement of being myself. I use to feel like everything I did weight on my shoulders. Pressure was always on. I would often end the day with a debilitating soreness on my shoulders. It was a manifestation of constant pressure and the stress involved.
So I developed a new routine. I began to remind myself on a daily basis, “The pressure is off. I do not need to give into pressure. My Dad in heaven loves me and is proud of me. He delights in me.”
Before I do any session, give a teaching or speak somewhere, I rehearse a very simple statement. “Father, you love me. There’s nothing to prove today. So I am going to be myself and enjoy being your loved son. You love these people more than I do and you know exactly what they need. So I submit myself as a vessel. But this moment has nothing to do with my worth, value or acceptance in you. The pressure’s off.”
When the pressure is off, you get to have fun and enjoy life. I didn’t enjoy much of life. I was always trying to get by. Yet when I knew I was loved, I began to engage a whole new way of seeing life.
When I know that I have nothing to prove, there’s no performance pressure. I don’t have to perform for anybody. Just be myself. There’s no feeling of having to be perfect.
3. You Have Nothing to Fear
When you know you are loved, one of the greatest blessings is how love actually casts out fear. You demolish and banish fear when love is truly present.
perfect love casts out fear… I John 4:18
My first step to overcoming anxiety was to recognize my need for greater love in my heart.
If you have any kind of fear issue in your life; anxiety, stress, worry, panic attacks, phobias, dread, anxiousness – whatever form shape and size, you have a lot deficit.
Wherever you fear is the area that needs the perfecting work of God’s love. It’s not about getting smarter, doing more or finding that perfect technique. It’s about knowing you are loved. That’s what so many are missing today, and it’s why anxiety and fear relating struggles are rising.
The love of God has a perfecting work. Perfect love is pure without extra motives. There’s no side angle. There’s no catch. He loves you. It’s pure; it’s true; it’s right.
When I know I’m loved, I have nothing to fear. That’s why God said over and over and over and over again–it’s like 365 times, one for every day, in the Bible it says, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t fear.” What you need is to the power of God’s love that empowers you to put fear away. His love displaces fear and kicks it out.
4. You Like What You See in the Mirror
There is a spiritual wrestling match going on in the lives of millions of people over this issue. One of the greatest ways you and I can receive God’s love is by learning to love ourselves; to love who God made you to be and live freely from that love.
Too often, this is a battle that people ignore. Yet it is something that faces our lives every day.
When I know that I am loved, I like what I see in the mirror. I love myself. I accept myself. Thre is no cage wrestling match in my thoughts towards myself. The inside chatter of conflict, intensity and harshness dies down. Love has the power of shut down the loud voices that seek to push you down.
When you love yourself, you accept how tall you are, how short you are, how skinny you are, how fat you are, how you’re shaped, your skin color, how you look, how you talk, how you sound when you talk, how you act, what you’re good at, what you’re not good at.
When love is present, those flaws are not tormenting; they’re endearing. It’s your uniqueness and how God made you to be on this planet.
Even in your sins, love arrives to helps deliver a perspective to you. You are still accepted, even in your junk, even in your garbage. God knows He won’t fix, change, and transform your life from a distance. He’s got to bring you in. That’s what Jesus is all about–bringing you close to the Father so you can be loved; through a price that you couldn’t pay.
He sent His Son to die so I can go to the Father and jump in Dad’s arms; knowing that I am loved and accepted.
It is in love relationship that I become changed. Attempts at transformation without His love is futile and filled with wasted energy. You’ll remain feeling like you are at a distance, you’ll be scared of Him, you’ll be scared to deal with issues. You will continued to stay busy and perform for acceptance.
Meanwhile, He love is waiting to set you free from battling yourself. It’s time you and I learn to become our own best friends, rather than our own worst enemies.
You were meant to be loved.
Question: What would change in your life if you knew you were loved by Father God in your heart? (Feel free to comment below)
Let Me Pray for You: Father, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ for everyone who is reading this, that You would touch their hearts right where they are at. God, I pray that your love would break through. Love of God come. Let them see You’ve got their back. Right where they are, whatever they are worried about; whatever they are struggling with, You’ve got their back.
There’s no abandonment in You. I call for abandonment to be removed from their lives. I release you from feeling like you have something to prove today; that you have to be perfect; that you have to perform; that the pressure’s on.
There’s no pressure on you. You have nothing to prove. I release you from that. You have nothing to be afraid of.
Love of God come and cast out that fear. Cast out that torment.
I also pray about how you see yourself; that the love of God would give you a healthy view of you. You must accept yourself right in the condition that you are right now so that you can move forward and grow in victory.
God bring that acceptance. Bring that love right now in all things that we may know the depth, the breadth, the love that You have for us that is beyond knowledge. It’s beyond just a head thing. It’s a heart thing. It must be experienced. And I pray that we’d experience that right now in Jesus’ Name I pray these things, amen.