Betrayal

Love is a mysterious thing. First John 4:8 says that God is love. God is mysterious, so it would make sense that love is a mysterious thing. 

It is with love that Jesus came and died for our sins. Love delivers us from the yoke of slavery to sin and sets us free. It makes us new creations. Love puts the Holy Spirit in us, gives us a new heart, and we are born again. It is with love that our names are written in the book of life and we get to spend eternity with the Father that bestows all of this love on us. 

Yet, not one of us can explain how. How does love work out such things like this? 

I love my children. I love my ex-husband but I can’t do any of these things for them. I want to. But I do not love the way God loves. We are made in God’s image and He calls us to love. First John 4:7 and 8 says “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Yet, we are finite and incapable of this kind of love. The kind of love God gives. 

That word, KNOW, in verse 8 means to be deeply and intimately acquainted with. 

If you have a hard time feeling or believing God’s love, could it be that you don’t really KNOW him?

When I was growing up I knew love to be a certain way. As I got older I pursued that love in all the wrong places. Then, I fell in love with a man. 

Some say that people are incapable of love before they are saved because we don’t yet know the love of Jesus. But, I believe that we are made in the image of God and love is part of our DNA so we have a natural inclination to love. However, just like the have a natural inclination to talk we can choose to talk, or in this case love, in ways that do not mirror the goodness of God.

So I fell in love and then I experienced betrayal. DoT worry, he experienced betrayal too. This post is not about how he did me wrong. In our human nature to sin, we both betrayed each other. We hurt each other deeply. And, get this, we hurt each other in love. We wounded each other and throughout the years we piled on that wound with more hurt. 

This is the condition of every human heart before it accepts the love of Jesus. 

This can become the condition of the human heart even with Jesus as we forget who the Father really is and what is true and good about His love.

Unfortunately, the hurt and betrayal continued long after Jesus came to redeem my heart and I developed a bad taste in my mouth for the things of love. My heart became hard and every time the Father would move toward me in love I would experience pain instead of pleasure and I would push back.

This is called a trigger. Any love that came my way triggered my heart into pain and protection.

Our life experiences teach us to protect our hearts from the things that hurt us. I had learned to protect my heart from love. I believed that letting love in would only lead to more hurt and more betrayal and more heartbreak. I have been through enough of that. 

But…

I could not KNOW God without allowing His love in. The pain stayed trapped inside my heart and God couldn’t get in to heal it.  And as much as I wanted and pleaded to become deeply and intimately acquainted with the heart of God I just couldn’t.

Until…

I asked God to reconcile my heart and I let the pain of the past go. I asked him to come and shatter the stone covering my heart and to redeem love.

And friend, God answers prayers like this. And I KNOW God in a brand new way.

If that is where you are today, that you have just been hurt so much in the name of love that love itself seems like a trap, let me first say that I am so sorry you went through that. You deserved better. It’s not your fault. I pray that God himself comforts you and gives you a vision for a future without pain.

I also invite you to say this prayer with me:

God, I want to know you, but there are things in my heart that are getting in the way. Rip them out Lord, break them down, and clean everything that wasn’t from you out of there. Holy Spirit come and fill me up. Fill up every space that has been cleaned out and redeem what the enemy stole from me. Jesus come close to me and let me hear your heartbeat as I learn how to sit and receive from you. In Jesus's name, Amen.

Sweet friend,

You are loved!