Never Regret Giving Love - Part II

Never Regret Giving Love – Part II

You cannot find love in fallacious and dogged efforts to earn the heartfelt affections of others.  They cannot complete us.  All the same, love flows straight from the essence of God’s character.  Giving and sharing love is never a waste.  It is in that act that we most authentically yield ourselves to God.  In the gift of Christ (John 3:16-21), God did not waste His love.  Rather, He eternally fulfills the covenant He made with humankind.  Unfortunately, millions of people do not appreciate this incredible gift of love.  More practically, people deny the love of God as it manifests itself in their rejection of our love.  Yet, as we love, God works through us.  Accordingly, we should thank the Lord for using us to demonstrate His enduring love to all of humankind even those persons whom we dislike.

Moreover, we should not regret loving those persons whom we characterize as our “enemies.”  For the most part, I have concluded that my “enemies” are very broken and hurt people.  Thus they do not love themselves and cannot love anyone else as a result.  Unfortunately, such people displace their anger, injuries and disappointment onto us.  We may remind them of people who hurt them.  Because they never resolved those past hurts, they injure other people in an attempt to liberate themselves from a victim’s complex.  This is quintessential neurotic behavior.  St. Augustine, Carl Jung, Larry Crabb and the Lord Jesus Christ, all, agree that neurosis develops from an inappropriate attempt to resolve the pain in our lives.  Fundamentally, the love of God in Christ Jesus (agape as defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8) is the lasting remedy to the soul sickness of our “enemies.” 

As we progress spiritually, our understanding of love matures.  God’s agape is not natural for us.  It requires a lifetime of devoted discipleship.  We usually imitate the love that we observe growing up.  For some of us, duty, labor, provision and faithfulness are concrete love.  We are not the touchy, feely types.  Others of us are far more emotional, passionate and demonstratively affectionate.  We had parents, siblings and extended family members who were openly loving.  Nevertheless, our growing knowledge of love, which most significantly emerges from our spiritual nature rather than our emotions, means that any past love that we have shown would be incomplete albeit sincere.  It should not then surprise us that others, due to their limited understanding of love, were unable to fully appreciate the love we gave.  Yet, we freely gave time, talent, feelings and gifts to a significant other or covenant community with the hope that they would reciprocate.  Their inability or failure to do so does not nullify the love that we gave.  Interestingly, our increasing knowledge of love will ultimately motivate us to forgive those who squandered upon the love we gave.  It additionally provides us with peace to resist the temptation of concluding that we wasted ourselves on others.