Open And Receiving

One of the hardest things for broken people is to be humble enough to receive love, and receive love, and receive love again until our hearts are filled and healed.  We’d rather hold a record of wrongs.  We’d rather have a little bank account of resentments that give us excuse to act out.  We don’t really want to receive unconditional love for ourselves and we certainly don’t want to have to pass unconditional love along to others.  We want our rights.  We want others to make things right with us.  We want justice. We want retribution.  We want our “pound of flesh.” God’s way of dealing with the damage in our lives is to offer us grace -- grace for our shortcomings and grace for others in their shortcomings as well.

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony (Colossians 3:13-14 NLT)

God invites us to put on His love – unconditional love that covers a multitude of sins.  To humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings is to come to love – really come to a place of receiving enough love that every single hurtful issue in our minds and hearts is saturated in His love. How do we receive?  It can be as simple as sincerely saying the words.  It usually involves letting something go that has been cluttering up our mind or our emotions.  Receive.  Receive until our hearts are touched.  Receive until our minds are filled with peace.  Put away everything that challenges the peace of God as it comes to our awareness.  Give it to Jesus and ask Him to fill us in that sad, fearful or wounded place.  Say the words over and over again as needed, “Lord Jesus, I receive the love and peace you are giving.  Lord Jesus I receive the healing for that hurt.  Lord Jesus I receive hope and faith in that place where it’s hard for me to believe and trust.  I receive.  I receive.  I receive.”  God WILL fill us.

As God’s abiding love fills us with safety and security in the deepest places of our being, we can then go out and bless, and be gentle and strong in our human relationships.  We can forgive.  We can bless those who despitefully use us.  We can live in character strengths rather than shortcomings and invite others to do the same.  As people around us act poorly and it impacts us, we go to God and receive His healing in that place again, and again.  If we react poorly and feel guilt and shame, we go to God and receive His forgiveness and comfort again, and again.  In this way God invites all of us to live in His safe and enduring love – the only expression of life that is without shortcoming.

We love because he loved us first. Anyone who says he loves God but in fact hates his brother or sister is a liar. He doesn’t love his brother or sister, whom he has seen. So he can’t love God, whom he has not seen.  Here is the command God has given us. Anyone who loves God must also love his brothers and sisters.  (1 John 4:19-21 NIV)