Don't Be Afraid to Break Your Heart for God

None of Us Deserves Love

None of us is deserving of love. Jesus was the only person to walk the earth deserving of love. Not one of us is less or more deserving than another. What makes the love of God so amazing is that we did not earn it. We deserved what Jesus suffered on our behalf. But if we had been perfect, Jesus’ sacrifice would have meant nothing. I believe love really only exists where it is not earned.

Some folks are very hard to love and some are very easy to love. The hard-to-love folks are the ones focused on being loved instead of loving. The easy-to-love are the ones focused less on being loved and more on loving. We all struggle with this.

The root problem with feeling that we don't deserve love is that we are looking in the wrong direction for love and have not come to understand the true love God has for us. We are preoccupied by who loves us, when our focus should be on loving others, whether we are loved or not.

How You Love Defines You

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Most of us feel unlovable. Truth is we are. And it’s especially normal to feel unloved and disheartened in the face of rejection or a broken or failed relationship. The temptation and trap is to believe being loved or unloved somehow defines us. If someone loves us, it defines them—not us; and if someone does not love us, that also defines them—not us.

What does define us is our loving or failure to love. Because we all so often fail to love, we should repent for this, be so grateful for forgiveness and do a better job loving going forward. Being hurt by unloving people will pass and it's not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing we can do is stop loving because we have been hurt or unloved.

If you stay focused on yourself, you stay miserable: always feeling judged, lonely, offended, hurt and worse. The people that know they are unlovable but realize they are loved anyway are always focused on making sure they love instead of making sure they are loved.

That’s the side of love to live on.

C.S. Lewis said humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. I believe we can say the same about love. Love just isn't very concerned about itself. Self is an obsession to fear, and a distraction to love.

Love is Not an Emotion Fed by Fear

Most of us don’t understand what love really is. We see love as a feeling, an emotion. But the feeling is only the fruit of love, not love itself. We believe that the feeling of love can only come when we are loved, so we do anything and everything to get others to love us, and we get upset with others who won't love us like we want.

But what we do to get love seeds the root of fear, and grows more fear, not love. God’s Word tells us to love, and if we have the faith to love—no matter what—we will never have to look for love again because it will chase us down. I so often hear people talking about loving themselves. What they are trying to do is give themselves the feeling that the love of others gives them. I don't think that is even possible. I think God created us for love. If God could just love Himself—why would He create us? Love works when it is given without expectations; and if we try to get love any other way, we will fail.

1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

God’s Love for us is Only Half the Picture

God is the author of love—the purest, strongest love we will ever know. He first loved us before anyone else, and loves us so much that He gave His only begotten Son Jesus Christ so that our sins would be forgiven and we would know eternal life and spend eternity with Him and His Son.

God’s love for us is an everlasting love. We don’t deserve it. We don’t have to earn it. We can never lose it, no matter how unlovable we feel or act. The truest, greatest love affair we’ll ever know begins with God’s love for us, but it doesn’t end there. His love for us finds completion when we love Him enough to live in obedience to Him and without expecting a reward for that love and obedience. True love is unselfish and selfless: no strings attached.

The Greatest of These is Love

1 Corinthians 13 tells us that we can have everything and do everything, but if we do not have love, we have nothing. The chapter ends with the statement, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” You can add love to nothing and you have everything or you can take it away from everything and you have nothing.

Scripture tells us to love God with all our hearts, all our souls and all our minds and our neighbors as ourselves,” like in Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30 and Matthew 22:37. In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:1 say the first commandment is to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength; and the second commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves; and “there is no greater commandment than these.”

Love God Expecting Nothing in Return

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When we learn to love God more than we love ourselves and we allow God’s love to flow to and through us and spill out to others in loving acts, that’s when we feel the most loved and lovable. It’s not a give-to-get, it’s a give-to-give love.

God doesn’t hold His love ransom from us and He doesn’t want us to hold our love for Him or others as ransom for anything. Love given freely, unselfishly, unconditionally, without expecting anything in return— that is pure love. When we love God with all our heart, all our souls and all our minds, that love of God consummates His love for us.

God’s love is like an ocean of water standing miles high around a glass heart that will come rushing in instantly only if we break the glass. He can't break it. We don't break the glass when we ask God to love us. We break the glass when we say, “If I gain nothing, if it cost me everything, if I suffer the rest of my life, for the love you gave me, Jesus, I love you!” When we do that, expecting absolutely nothing, that’s when the glass shatters and the ocean of God’s love and presence rushes in to fill us from the inside out.

1 John 4 says: “15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.”

We can learn from the thief on the cross at Calvary. He may be one of the most unlovable characters in the Bible. He must have been filled with fear that day in that hour, but he shattered the glass when he spoke out, recognizing Jesus for who He is: “Surely, He is the son of God!” The thief didn't speak out to get anything, but found everything in that instant he felt God’s love and loved God; and everything changed.

When we surrender our fears to the love of God and love Him—no matter what—everything changes for us, too; and that’s when we experience the greatest miracle of all.