Relationships, Self-Confidence
Is This God’s Love?
Check your view of God’s Love For You. I would love to hear your viewpoint. Please leave your comment below.
The Trickle-Down Theory of Conditional Love
Jesus Loves me, but…He Loves me conditionally.
Therefore: His love is based on my performance.
Therefore: I have to earn His love by pleasing Him.
Therefore: When I please Him, I feel loved. When I don’t please Him, I feel rejected.
Therefore: If God, Who is “all-loving,” does not always love, accept and value me, how can I expect to believe that I am valuable and lovable?
Therefore: I don’t believe that I am basically a lovable, valuable person.
Therefore, I am not able to trust other people who say they love. I suspect their motives or figure that they just don’t know the “real” me yet.
Therefore, I can’t accept love from other people. I deflect it. I try to prove that I am right — that I am NOT lovable, and that they will eventually reject me.
Therefore, they usually do.
Therefore, I use the world’s standards (money, status, clothes, sex, etc.) to prove to myself and others that I am VALUABLE. I need strokes and feed back from other people to prove to myself and to others that I am LOVABLE.
Therefore, I need a “fresh fix” of strokes every day just to get through the day feeling good about myself.
Therefore, I place impossible demands on people who love me. I frustrate them. I am never satisfied with what they are giving me. I don’t allow them to be honest with me or confront me. I’m focused on me, and I expect them to be focused on me, too.
Therefore, since I don’t love who I AM, I don’t expect that others will love me either. Why would anyone want something that has no real value?
Therefore, I try to earn their love by what I DO. I don’t give out of a desire to love, but to BE LOVED. Most of what I do is tied up in “self,” so the people I profess to love don’t really feel loved. They feel manipulated. I’m trying to avoid rejection rather than trying to build a loving relationship.
Therefore: I am not able to sustain a healthy, loving, lasting relationship.
Do you feel this way sometimes? Do think most Christians feel or act this way?
Please share your thoughts below.
God’s love for us is perfect, continuous, eternal and unconditional.
Who else do we have on earth and/or in Heaven who truly loves and cares for us?
God’s love for us has never been the issue; it’s our love for Him that comes into question.
1Jn 5:3 says, ” For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”
Jn 14:21, ” He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
2Jn 6, “And this is love, that we walk after His commandments. This is the commandment,That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.”
Further: Luke 8:21, “And He (Jesus) answered and said unto them, My mother and My brethren are these which hear the Word of God, and do it.”
Clearly, we are to express our love for God and Christ Jesus through our obedience. We are to demonstrate our love, not with just lip service, but with our behavior. The verse in Lk 8:21 tells us that we aren’t even in the family until we “hear the Word of God and do it.”
Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and His Son, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Bill, thanks for your comments and the scriptural reminders of God’s unconditional love for each of us. Sometimes we forget about God’s love during hard times or waiting for prayers to be answered. Knowing God loves us and actually feeling God loves us may be two different things. When we love someone we try to please them and want them to happy…I want to please God. You have given us scriptural guidelines on how we can show our love towards God. God Bless You, Cynthia