Developing A Healthy Concept of Love
The World's Concept of Love1. Expectation on the person - taking - based on getting returns.
2. Hurt - when expectations aren’t met 3. Disillusionment - (victim thinking begins) 4. Blame 5. Anger 6. Bitterness/resentment 7. Ambivalence - Uncaring, feelings gone. 8. Death of love. Based on a "feeling" love. A seeking for love. Feelings come and go based on circumstances and perceptions. Satan's deceptive lies. Wear your heart on your sleeve. “All the days of the oppressed are wretched, Oppressed - victimized by the world, it’s concepts, desires and devices. Prince of power of the air. |
The Forming and Nurturing of a Fulfilling, Growing Love
1. Choose to love - true agape giving – irrespective of human returns.
2. Patience - love covers all transgressions - actively seeking complementary uniqueness. 3. Hopeful thankfulness - given to richly enjoy. Vision above circumstances. Exceedingly abundantly beyond all you ask or think. 4. Affirmation - strong belief in the person, building up. 5. Freedom to praise - active love 6. Delight/enjoyment - true and projected from within. 7. Deepening love - love begets love, feelings grow. 8. Rich, fulfilling, growing love. Based on a love of the will. A giving of love. Feeling results from foundation based on application of truth. God's freeing truth. Braveheart - internal bold love. but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.” Prov 15:15 Free - acting on, not reacting to. As God’s cherished children we are not to live as victims but victors. |
This is designed to build a strong foundation for a true love. True love, as it was designed, starts with its roots solidly in God – where they originated and were created to dwell. It is not rooted in a feeling that gets tossed to and fro with the response to people or circumstances, as the world has taught us. God greatly desires to set us free in this love. He will put our feet upon a rock so we can love in spite of circumstances. Most people, Christians included, don’t know the substance of this love. If you wish to embark on a trip to find it, read on.
1. Expectation on the person - taking - based on returns. The way we learn to love in the world is to put our expectations on another person hoping they will love us and/or fulfill what is lacking in us. We all want to be loved. Nothing wrong with that – just depends on the source of the love. We have a genuine hollowness in our heart that yearns for love to fill it up. If it’s an imperfect source in the world, it will fail us, no matter how hard it tries. We are set up by the world to try to take or receive love from these people. If they don’t give it as we expect it – we are disappointed.
Choose to love - true agape giving - irrespective of human returns. In contrast with learning to love in the world’s approach as above, God has a different approach. But it has largely been stolen from us by Satan to keep us under his influence. He takes advantage of us and tries to get us to fill up the hollowness inside us in the wrong ways. Satan knows if we learn to transfer our heart’s allegiance to the security of God rather than hang it out to be tossed to and fro by the world in seeking love in all the wrong places, we will no longer be subject to Satan’s influence. He loses. The first step is to recognize we are playing by Satan’s rules. If we don’t identify the problem and the enemy clearly, we are subject to be entwined in it and wallow in it some more. For the most part, to get to the point of being able to choose to love irrespective of circumstances, God has to do a whole rework of each person’s heart. It’s an individual thing. It does not depend on anyone else. It’s between you and God – if you want to be set free. The alternative is to stay entwined in a false concept of love that tosses you to and fro. No fun. God is a jealous God and desires your heart of hearts to be securely resting in Him and enthralled with Him. That’s how He created you. That will protect you from the trials of the world. Your heart and self-concept will be hidden with Christ in God. So to choose to love, God must do a work personally in your heart. If you choose to let Him begin that work, He will take you on a path where He becomes the lover of your soul. His love will transcend earthly bounds in your heart - and you will see His love played out through you such that it will thrill and amaze you – all irrespective of what returns you are getting from the world. That’s why Satan tries to steal it.
2. Hurt - when expectations aren’t met. When we hang our love out for a mere human to dabble with it – we will get hurt. They are not perfect and no matter how hard they may try, they cannot love us fully as we deserve. Only the intimacy of God can do that. He reserves that for Himself – to hold us in His arms. He does say He has given us all things richly to…possess? No…demand from? No...bite and devour? No…enjoy? Yes! Our experiences with other people have been given to us by God to “enjoy”. Now it doesn’t say these experiences will meet all our needs – just that we are to see why God gave them to us so we can properly enjoy them in the context of His sovereignty and love for us (we probably haven’t learned to think that way). If in any way these things don’t meet our full expectations (which they likely won’t) we are to inquire into the heart of God to see how He wishes us to “enjoy” them – while He ultimately meets our deepest needs. That’s why He said to hate your mother and father and all that other stuff compared to your love for Him. They’re love is good, but only His offers the ultimate fulfillment you need. As we begin to inquire and catch onto how and why He does things, we find intimacy forming with God, we know His heart – and our security is gradually transferred from being tossed to and fro by the world to resting securely in His arms. Much safer. Interesting process. That’s how He created it to work. Only He will ultimately fulfill us. He reserves that to Himself. We just learn to enjoy the rest in the context of His love. In the world scheme of things, if someone close doesn’t meet our expectations, we can get desperate and tend to bite and devour them trying to get them met. That’s what Satan has taught us to do – and that’s all we can do if we don’t have our heart rooted in God. Transferring the ultimate meeting of our needs to God is the only way to be set free. The rest is just thrashing about in the muck and mire – getting hurt. Ouch!
Patience - love covers all transgressions - actively seeking complementary uniqueness. Now…if we are learning to let God penetrate our heart of hearts and love and delight in us above all else, we will learn we are fearfully and wonderfully made in His eyes. Just as He is the great “I AM”, He says about us that, “YOU ARE” fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. Period! This never changes – but few of us know this, really know it. We need to hang around Him and inquire of Him to realize it. He will show us our uniqueness as He created it, and how totally endearing we are to Him. It doesn’t matter what other people think of us – He says we are delightful just as we are underneath all the surface problems and will continually reveal it to us in little and big ways in our lives. He pierces right through our sinfulness to reveal the true us – delightful in His eyes, fearfully and wonderfully made – just as we are. We don’t have to clean ourselves up. He will do that with us – and in the process we will fall deeper in love with Him. We can meet Him right where we are with all our problems, failings and poor self-concept – and He will love us fully right there. This is great! This is how His unconditional love will take root in our hearts. It must first take root there before it can flow out to others. So all our failings are just opportunities for us to grow closer to Him as He meets us there in the muck and mire and walks us out of them. Beautiful! He says don’t receive the negative things others say or think about you, receive what I think about you – the truth. Unless they are looking at you through His eyes (which they should be if they want to be free and be able to genuinely love you), they will get a distorted picture from the thief – usually one that is oriented around self. Quit being tossed to and fro by the lies of the thief. It’s time to come to the fullness of who I created you to be. We’ll have a great time as I transform your frailties to glory! So as we learn He is patient with us and looks right past all our transgressions to delight in us being wonderfully made, we will begin to be able to be patient with others and see past their transgressions to how God sees them as being wonderfully made. He has to do the work deep in us before this happens – but it’s a delightful process to be set free – a little painful at times because we cling to our old false securities, but, as we grow out of the lies it gets more delightful.
3. Disillusionment - (victim thinking begins). Playing in the thief’s court in the world scheme of things, our expectations set on mere humans don’t get met (Duh!), so we receive hurt and the next thing that happens playing with Satan’s rules is…we get disillusioned. It’s the normal skill set of the world. Happens all the time – if we want to continue to play that game – and be victimized. Disillusionment is part of victim-think. Satan wants to victimize us and we play into it by not being still and seeing what God is doing by faith-value, but look directly at things by face-value. They don’t look good on the surface, and we interpret them through the distortions of Satan’s rules…so we get disillusioned. Poor me. I’m a victim. Satan’s got us playing right into his hands. We totally miss what God is desiring to do. God made us victors, not victims, but the thief has us disillusioned. Time to cast that aside!
Hopeful thankfulness - given to richly enjoy. Vision above circumstances. Exceedingly abundantly beyond all you ask or think. Now on the other hand…playing by God’s rules with our feet solidly upon a rock (or getting there), we know (or are learning) that God does no cheat us – in anything that comes into our lives. So we look to Him in faith-value with hope and believe it forth in spite of the face-value of seemingly negative circumstances in front of us. We don’t just leave it lay in the muck and mire upon earth, we invoke the full power of the Lord of the Universe to continue His work upon it since he allowed it into our lives in the first place. He’s pushing for glory – so don’t stop short at face-value. We learn to explore what He wants us to enjoy from it and leave Him to meet the remaining needs or expectations the person or circumstance leaves undone. He is the only one big enough to back up His guarantee of not cheating us. This beats biting and devouring them (or ourselves with disillusionment and pity) trying to get our needs met by face-value. By learning to be still and rest our expectations ultimately in Him (takes time), we empower Him to do “exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we could ask or think” (Eph 3:19,20). So rather than wallow in earthly disillusionment and self-pity, God is dynamically working in the situation and we are buying into His power and love rather than wallowing in and limiting ourselves to our mere human perspective.
4. Blame. We have learned by Satan’s rules that when our needs are not met we usually blame someone – either someone else or ourselves. In God’s perspective this is a waste of time – yet we do it so often and so well! It is a popular past time. We need to truly learn to let God’s love and delight wash over us so we can be set free of these rules of bondage. As He gradually reasons with us and convinces us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in soooo many big and little ways, He will transfer our frail self-concept to rest in Him and set our feet upon the rock of freedom. This will be refreshing. The one person truly deserving of blame rarely gets it. He deceives us into blaming others or ourselves. That person is Satan. He is out to steal, kill and destroy – and make it look like others are to blame. Why do we let Satan wreak havoc and destroy our relationships and marriages – and then blame each other? Put the blame where it belongs – on him, and begin to let God’s glory fill your life and heal it. Quite playing by Satan’s rules into destruction.
Affirmation - strong belief in the person, building up. As we begin to let God affirm and refresh our spirit, we learn to no longer cast our pearls before swine and hang our self-concept out there to be kicked around by the world, the flesh and the devil. As He deeply refreshes our spirit (it takes time)…we begin to be able to see others not through our limited disillusioned vision but through His eyes. We begin to be set free from reacting to people and can begin to love them unconditionally. Fact, we do need love. And when God fills us up with it to the point that it begins to flow out of us, it is awesome! You can only love others as you love yourself. This is also a fact. Until you learn to properly love yourself, you will not know how to properly love (or receive love) from others. You’ll be looking for love in all the wrong places. As you reason with God and He convinces you how precious you are to Him, it will gradually take root in your heart, and as He loves you, you will be able to love others. Marvelous freedom! It must happen within you first. That’s just the way it works. Otherwise if you think lowly of yourself and treat yourself badly, you will do the same to others. You can’t give what you don’t have. Let God release you from the lies that bind you and fill it up!
5. Anger. Having bought into the lie of the thief to live unto ourselves, we tend to get angry when things don’t go as we wish them to go. We believe that we have “rights” and we demand that those “rights” be met. When they don’t get met in the way we think they should, we get angry. In some ways we think (and act like) we are the center of the Universe and the world revolves around us. Is it true that we are the center of the Universe? No. So we are basing our lives on a lie. That causes frustration and anger. Maybe we need a dose of the soothing truth (soothing once it settles into our hearts – pretty shocking when it initially smacks us up side the head to redirect our attention from bondage to freedom.)
Freedom to praise - active love. In the whole of God’s creation where do we get off acting like it is supposed to revolve around us – that our needs are paramount? It just isn’t so out there. Our needs are not paramount to others out there in the midst of their swamp full of alligators, even if they try there hardest to meet our needs. However, our needs ARE paramount to God – and He is not stuck in the swamp full of alligators. He is all powerful and all loving. He desires to meet our needs. The only limiting factor is if we let Him. Usually we are so busy and consumed with striving after meeting them that we don’t give Him a chance to meet them. And when we do, we confine Him to meeting the ones we want Him to meet and the way we want Him to do it. He doesn’t limit Himself to working in such a small little box. He wants to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think. We just have to learn to be still and let Him. The other thing He has to teach us is the difference between our needs – and our wants. Being self centered, we get those easily confused. Chasing and demanding your wants be met is a very good way to get angry. The beauty of God is He KNOWS exactly what we need to be fulfilled. We don’t. We think some of the things we want will fulfill us. They may satisfy us for awhile, like a good steak meal, but they will not fulfill us. Big difference between satisfaction and fulfillment. Satisfaction is what you get from what comes into your life. Fulfillment is what you get from what comes out of your life – your purpose finding its way out and expressing itself. God wants to wash aside all the frivolous, superficial wants that distract us and get down to the true issues resident in our hearts that fulfill us. He put them there – so He knows how to develop them and bring them forth – if we let Him. OK, so He is the only one who holds our needs paramount. Great! As we learn to transfer our reliance to Him rather than the world, He has greater freedom in our lives to bring them forth. He does not wish for us to be disillusioned, angry people. The fruit of fulfillment is contentment. As our allegiance settles more and more in Him, we find more fulfillment and contentment – irrespective of worldly circumstances. This is good. This deep rooted contentment sets us free from getting tossed to and fro by not getting our wants met by the world. We are then free to praise God, because were not circumstance based, and bless others unconditionally – in the midst of circumstances. It’s a complete reversal of how we have been taught to play the game. We are free to get our needs met by God, who is fully capable of that and doesn’t cheat us, and, as a result, we are able to actively love others.
6. Bitterness/resentment. So when our wants or needs are not met to our liking, we have learned to go the next step and internalize all this by getting bitter and resentful. That’s like getting even with someone by poisoning yourself. Who taught us that! The bitterness and resentment doesn’t bother them – so why are we doing it to ourselves? See how Satan has us wrapped around his finger with his lies! We do stupid things that hurt us to get even with others. Silly! And a great waste of time and a good life.
Delight, enjoyment - true and projected from within. The true man (means men and woman – the human race) does not have to play those games because He has tapped into the Author of Creation and his psyche is securely resting there – rather than being thrashed about by the world. Rather than lash out or internalize bitterness, he can draw upon other resources. For one, they are growing content with themselves before the Creator of the Universe. He delights in them and is showing it to them in more and more ways now that they are not interpreting things through the distortions of the thief. From that deep well they are able to sense delight with how God is dealing with them – as they pierce through the lies of the thief and catch onto how God works. It is a much brighter picture leading to discovering the enjoyment God has for us rather than wallowing in bitterness, as Satan would have us do.
7. Ambivalence. Uncaring, feelings gone. After wallowing in bitterness, resentment and having a pity party, we move on to resignation. That’s it! I don’t care anymore! I’m done! Can you see the progression here? Satan has taken our emotions and progressively shaken them like a dog shakes a rag doll until we just don’t care anymore. We are empty. Is that not the perfect definition of the thief stealing, killing and destroying – until we are empty? Yes it is. Stop playing his game! It goes nowhere good and ends up in destruction – your destruction. But in some ways, this realization is good. It is an indication that you are fed up with playing by Satan’s rules. Hallelujah! God is saying to you it is time to throw those rules out, be set free to love and begin to play by His rules – the truth of love. The problem is you don’t yet know how to play by His rules because you’ve been playing by the old ones for so long – and Satan wants you to throw out the relationship, rather than the rules. If he does that, he wins. Don’t play by that last rule and let him win. Throw all the old rules out. If God has brought you to this point, He believes you are ready to move on to resting in the truth rather than being thrashed about by lies. He meets you where you are and takes it from there. He affirms you. We just have to begin to be still and look to Him to begin to learn how He wants to build a true foundation of love in our hearts. One that sets us free.
Deepening love - love begets love, feelings grow. Rather than have you end up defeated as an empty vessel, God would like to do something else. The same series of circumstances interpreted and dealt with through His eyes are actually designed to deepen our love. Circumstances aren’t the problem, our reaction or response to them is. Our reactions, which are most likely based on the thief’s rules, just get us in deeper trouble. That is why we must pause before we react and be willing to be still and let God reveal and do what He wants. This takes some time to catch onto. Rather than stealing things from you leaving you empty, He pours Himself into you (as we be still and let Him) filling you to overflowing. You see, His love is based upon fact, not feeling. It is a much stronger, more secure foundation. The foundation of your love is based upon the All Powerful, All Loving God of the Universe – rather than some mere, frail human or feeling. As your love gradually sinks its roots into His heart, it finds fulfillment and security there such that as it gets healthy it can begin to venture forth and explore extending this love to others. Once you get a solid foundation and begin to feel true love for yourself as He reveals how precious you are, you are more able to love others unconditionally. You are fulfilled to overflowing. This is the best, and true way, to love. As this foundation is laid on the truth, feelings will be built upon it. But they will be solid feelings rooted in an unconditional love, not flippant feelings that have no solid roots.
8. Death of love. At this point in the thief’s rules, the worldly love dies. That was the thief’s objective all along. He’s got us where he wants us – momentarily. We have now been brought low and completely oppressed by his lies. And as God says in the first half of Proverbs 15:15, “all the days of the oppressed are wretched”. Thing aren’t looking too good in the natural progression of the thief’s approach. In reality what did you expect by believing lies. An engineer who builds something based on lies rather than the truth of physics is going to have a wretched experience. It’s not going to work. This is a “natural” path within the lies of the thief - destruction. It happens all the time. But it doesn’t have to. As I said…this is the turning point God has brought you to. Satan meant it for evil…but God meant it for good. He is affirming to you that He wants to set you free – not free from the relationship, but free from the lies that steal, kill and destroy the relationship. You must shift to resting in Him so He can begin to work together for good in rebuilding your life upon His unconditional love and in restoring the relationship. If you don’t, you are likely to let Satan continue to dominate and destroy. It will take time, and many times you’ll revert to the old lies you know so well,…but as you seek Him, He will patiently walk you out of the muck and mire and set your feet upon a rock. He’s going that way…learn to go along with Him.
Rich, fulfilling, growing love. At this stage, if we were following God’s path rather than the lies of the thief, we would have grown deep within ourselves to allow Him to be coming forth with a rich, fulfilling, growing, unconditional love. The joy of the Lord would be our strength (rather than trying to suck the life out of people and things) and rather than experiencing the “wretched” first half of Proverbs 15:15, we would be experiencing the second half – “but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.” Our heart would be overflowing with joy and able to interpret the circumstances He lays before us as part of His continual feast for us. We would interpret them at faith-value and receive His loving purpose in them, rather than see them by mere face-value and miss out on the richness of His love hidden beneath the surface. This is a far cry from where the lies of the thief take us – and leave us. This is the richness that He now wants to build in your life, since He has brought you to the point of finally exposing the lies that bind you. Remember, you must refocus your eyes upon Him rather than the relationship, to allow Him to fill you up to overflowing. If you continue to focus on the relationship to get your ultimate needs met, you will try to bite and devour it and be left desolate. It wasn’t meant to ultimately meet your needs, but contribute in a very unique way towards meeting your needs – and then God would take it from there. God wants relationships to be complimentary – meaning the gifts and abilities of one person compliment the gifts and abilities of the other. He will strongly promote that in a relationship, particularly a covenant marriage relationship. Satan wants to strip all that off and destroy the relationship, particularly the covenant marriage relationship – and he’s done a good job. Interpreting the relationship by his rules makes the complimentary gifts annoying to us. Learning to interpret them by God’s love and sovereignty reveals how they can be refreshing and complimentary to us. Yes, there still will likely be friction, but it will be the positive friction of one person sharpening the countenance of the other as iron sharpens iron. He, not the thief, wants to show you how to have the most fulfilling relationship that is literally beyond your wildest dreams. He is God. He is Awesome. That’s what an Awesome God does to be Awesome. Once it is rooted in Him, you are no longer victimized by the thief, or the way the thief plays out the relationship. Your feet are set upon the Rock of Christ and you begin to live strongly as a victor, rather than be tossed to and fro in emotional squalor like a victim. You can apply Isaiah 1:18 and begin to reason together with God. Yes, you can actually not try and be hyper-spiritual in approaching Him, but just be real and make your case to God. He’s a big boy and can take it. In fact, He desires you to be real, just as you are. He already knows how you are anyway, so us being hyper-spiritual in relating to Him is just a façade that keeps us from allowing Him to get to the real issues so He can set us free. God is safe. He took care of all your judgment on the cross and put it behind Him. And now He wants to go about the daily business of redeeming and restoring the glory of His fearfully and wonderfully made creation in you. All you have to do is reason with Him and He will meet you where you are and teach you how to be still. You will find the reasoning alone will thrill your heart as you catch onto His delight in you.
1. Expectation on the person - taking - based on returns. The way we learn to love in the world is to put our expectations on another person hoping they will love us and/or fulfill what is lacking in us. We all want to be loved. Nothing wrong with that – just depends on the source of the love. We have a genuine hollowness in our heart that yearns for love to fill it up. If it’s an imperfect source in the world, it will fail us, no matter how hard it tries. We are set up by the world to try to take or receive love from these people. If they don’t give it as we expect it – we are disappointed.
Choose to love - true agape giving - irrespective of human returns. In contrast with learning to love in the world’s approach as above, God has a different approach. But it has largely been stolen from us by Satan to keep us under his influence. He takes advantage of us and tries to get us to fill up the hollowness inside us in the wrong ways. Satan knows if we learn to transfer our heart’s allegiance to the security of God rather than hang it out to be tossed to and fro by the world in seeking love in all the wrong places, we will no longer be subject to Satan’s influence. He loses. The first step is to recognize we are playing by Satan’s rules. If we don’t identify the problem and the enemy clearly, we are subject to be entwined in it and wallow in it some more. For the most part, to get to the point of being able to choose to love irrespective of circumstances, God has to do a whole rework of each person’s heart. It’s an individual thing. It does not depend on anyone else. It’s between you and God – if you want to be set free. The alternative is to stay entwined in a false concept of love that tosses you to and fro. No fun. God is a jealous God and desires your heart of hearts to be securely resting in Him and enthralled with Him. That’s how He created you. That will protect you from the trials of the world. Your heart and self-concept will be hidden with Christ in God. So to choose to love, God must do a work personally in your heart. If you choose to let Him begin that work, He will take you on a path where He becomes the lover of your soul. His love will transcend earthly bounds in your heart - and you will see His love played out through you such that it will thrill and amaze you – all irrespective of what returns you are getting from the world. That’s why Satan tries to steal it.
2. Hurt - when expectations aren’t met. When we hang our love out for a mere human to dabble with it – we will get hurt. They are not perfect and no matter how hard they may try, they cannot love us fully as we deserve. Only the intimacy of God can do that. He reserves that for Himself – to hold us in His arms. He does say He has given us all things richly to…possess? No…demand from? No...bite and devour? No…enjoy? Yes! Our experiences with other people have been given to us by God to “enjoy”. Now it doesn’t say these experiences will meet all our needs – just that we are to see why God gave them to us so we can properly enjoy them in the context of His sovereignty and love for us (we probably haven’t learned to think that way). If in any way these things don’t meet our full expectations (which they likely won’t) we are to inquire into the heart of God to see how He wishes us to “enjoy” them – while He ultimately meets our deepest needs. That’s why He said to hate your mother and father and all that other stuff compared to your love for Him. They’re love is good, but only His offers the ultimate fulfillment you need. As we begin to inquire and catch onto how and why He does things, we find intimacy forming with God, we know His heart – and our security is gradually transferred from being tossed to and fro by the world to resting securely in His arms. Much safer. Interesting process. That’s how He created it to work. Only He will ultimately fulfill us. He reserves that to Himself. We just learn to enjoy the rest in the context of His love. In the world scheme of things, if someone close doesn’t meet our expectations, we can get desperate and tend to bite and devour them trying to get them met. That’s what Satan has taught us to do – and that’s all we can do if we don’t have our heart rooted in God. Transferring the ultimate meeting of our needs to God is the only way to be set free. The rest is just thrashing about in the muck and mire – getting hurt. Ouch!
Patience - love covers all transgressions - actively seeking complementary uniqueness. Now…if we are learning to let God penetrate our heart of hearts and love and delight in us above all else, we will learn we are fearfully and wonderfully made in His eyes. Just as He is the great “I AM”, He says about us that, “YOU ARE” fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. Period! This never changes – but few of us know this, really know it. We need to hang around Him and inquire of Him to realize it. He will show us our uniqueness as He created it, and how totally endearing we are to Him. It doesn’t matter what other people think of us – He says we are delightful just as we are underneath all the surface problems and will continually reveal it to us in little and big ways in our lives. He pierces right through our sinfulness to reveal the true us – delightful in His eyes, fearfully and wonderfully made – just as we are. We don’t have to clean ourselves up. He will do that with us – and in the process we will fall deeper in love with Him. We can meet Him right where we are with all our problems, failings and poor self-concept – and He will love us fully right there. This is great! This is how His unconditional love will take root in our hearts. It must first take root there before it can flow out to others. So all our failings are just opportunities for us to grow closer to Him as He meets us there in the muck and mire and walks us out of them. Beautiful! He says don’t receive the negative things others say or think about you, receive what I think about you – the truth. Unless they are looking at you through His eyes (which they should be if they want to be free and be able to genuinely love you), they will get a distorted picture from the thief – usually one that is oriented around self. Quit being tossed to and fro by the lies of the thief. It’s time to come to the fullness of who I created you to be. We’ll have a great time as I transform your frailties to glory! So as we learn He is patient with us and looks right past all our transgressions to delight in us being wonderfully made, we will begin to be able to be patient with others and see past their transgressions to how God sees them as being wonderfully made. He has to do the work deep in us before this happens – but it’s a delightful process to be set free – a little painful at times because we cling to our old false securities, but, as we grow out of the lies it gets more delightful.
3. Disillusionment - (victim thinking begins). Playing in the thief’s court in the world scheme of things, our expectations set on mere humans don’t get met (Duh!), so we receive hurt and the next thing that happens playing with Satan’s rules is…we get disillusioned. It’s the normal skill set of the world. Happens all the time – if we want to continue to play that game – and be victimized. Disillusionment is part of victim-think. Satan wants to victimize us and we play into it by not being still and seeing what God is doing by faith-value, but look directly at things by face-value. They don’t look good on the surface, and we interpret them through the distortions of Satan’s rules…so we get disillusioned. Poor me. I’m a victim. Satan’s got us playing right into his hands. We totally miss what God is desiring to do. God made us victors, not victims, but the thief has us disillusioned. Time to cast that aside!
Hopeful thankfulness - given to richly enjoy. Vision above circumstances. Exceedingly abundantly beyond all you ask or think. Now on the other hand…playing by God’s rules with our feet solidly upon a rock (or getting there), we know (or are learning) that God does no cheat us – in anything that comes into our lives. So we look to Him in faith-value with hope and believe it forth in spite of the face-value of seemingly negative circumstances in front of us. We don’t just leave it lay in the muck and mire upon earth, we invoke the full power of the Lord of the Universe to continue His work upon it since he allowed it into our lives in the first place. He’s pushing for glory – so don’t stop short at face-value. We learn to explore what He wants us to enjoy from it and leave Him to meet the remaining needs or expectations the person or circumstance leaves undone. He is the only one big enough to back up His guarantee of not cheating us. This beats biting and devouring them (or ourselves with disillusionment and pity) trying to get our needs met by face-value. By learning to be still and rest our expectations ultimately in Him (takes time), we empower Him to do “exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we could ask or think” (Eph 3:19,20). So rather than wallow in earthly disillusionment and self-pity, God is dynamically working in the situation and we are buying into His power and love rather than wallowing in and limiting ourselves to our mere human perspective.
4. Blame. We have learned by Satan’s rules that when our needs are not met we usually blame someone – either someone else or ourselves. In God’s perspective this is a waste of time – yet we do it so often and so well! It is a popular past time. We need to truly learn to let God’s love and delight wash over us so we can be set free of these rules of bondage. As He gradually reasons with us and convinces us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in soooo many big and little ways, He will transfer our frail self-concept to rest in Him and set our feet upon the rock of freedom. This will be refreshing. The one person truly deserving of blame rarely gets it. He deceives us into blaming others or ourselves. That person is Satan. He is out to steal, kill and destroy – and make it look like others are to blame. Why do we let Satan wreak havoc and destroy our relationships and marriages – and then blame each other? Put the blame where it belongs – on him, and begin to let God’s glory fill your life and heal it. Quite playing by Satan’s rules into destruction.
Affirmation - strong belief in the person, building up. As we begin to let God affirm and refresh our spirit, we learn to no longer cast our pearls before swine and hang our self-concept out there to be kicked around by the world, the flesh and the devil. As He deeply refreshes our spirit (it takes time)…we begin to be able to see others not through our limited disillusioned vision but through His eyes. We begin to be set free from reacting to people and can begin to love them unconditionally. Fact, we do need love. And when God fills us up with it to the point that it begins to flow out of us, it is awesome! You can only love others as you love yourself. This is also a fact. Until you learn to properly love yourself, you will not know how to properly love (or receive love) from others. You’ll be looking for love in all the wrong places. As you reason with God and He convinces you how precious you are to Him, it will gradually take root in your heart, and as He loves you, you will be able to love others. Marvelous freedom! It must happen within you first. That’s just the way it works. Otherwise if you think lowly of yourself and treat yourself badly, you will do the same to others. You can’t give what you don’t have. Let God release you from the lies that bind you and fill it up!
5. Anger. Having bought into the lie of the thief to live unto ourselves, we tend to get angry when things don’t go as we wish them to go. We believe that we have “rights” and we demand that those “rights” be met. When they don’t get met in the way we think they should, we get angry. In some ways we think (and act like) we are the center of the Universe and the world revolves around us. Is it true that we are the center of the Universe? No. So we are basing our lives on a lie. That causes frustration and anger. Maybe we need a dose of the soothing truth (soothing once it settles into our hearts – pretty shocking when it initially smacks us up side the head to redirect our attention from bondage to freedom.)
Freedom to praise - active love. In the whole of God’s creation where do we get off acting like it is supposed to revolve around us – that our needs are paramount? It just isn’t so out there. Our needs are not paramount to others out there in the midst of their swamp full of alligators, even if they try there hardest to meet our needs. However, our needs ARE paramount to God – and He is not stuck in the swamp full of alligators. He is all powerful and all loving. He desires to meet our needs. The only limiting factor is if we let Him. Usually we are so busy and consumed with striving after meeting them that we don’t give Him a chance to meet them. And when we do, we confine Him to meeting the ones we want Him to meet and the way we want Him to do it. He doesn’t limit Himself to working in such a small little box. He wants to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think. We just have to learn to be still and let Him. The other thing He has to teach us is the difference between our needs – and our wants. Being self centered, we get those easily confused. Chasing and demanding your wants be met is a very good way to get angry. The beauty of God is He KNOWS exactly what we need to be fulfilled. We don’t. We think some of the things we want will fulfill us. They may satisfy us for awhile, like a good steak meal, but they will not fulfill us. Big difference between satisfaction and fulfillment. Satisfaction is what you get from what comes into your life. Fulfillment is what you get from what comes out of your life – your purpose finding its way out and expressing itself. God wants to wash aside all the frivolous, superficial wants that distract us and get down to the true issues resident in our hearts that fulfill us. He put them there – so He knows how to develop them and bring them forth – if we let Him. OK, so He is the only one who holds our needs paramount. Great! As we learn to transfer our reliance to Him rather than the world, He has greater freedom in our lives to bring them forth. He does not wish for us to be disillusioned, angry people. The fruit of fulfillment is contentment. As our allegiance settles more and more in Him, we find more fulfillment and contentment – irrespective of worldly circumstances. This is good. This deep rooted contentment sets us free from getting tossed to and fro by not getting our wants met by the world. We are then free to praise God, because were not circumstance based, and bless others unconditionally – in the midst of circumstances. It’s a complete reversal of how we have been taught to play the game. We are free to get our needs met by God, who is fully capable of that and doesn’t cheat us, and, as a result, we are able to actively love others.
6. Bitterness/resentment. So when our wants or needs are not met to our liking, we have learned to go the next step and internalize all this by getting bitter and resentful. That’s like getting even with someone by poisoning yourself. Who taught us that! The bitterness and resentment doesn’t bother them – so why are we doing it to ourselves? See how Satan has us wrapped around his finger with his lies! We do stupid things that hurt us to get even with others. Silly! And a great waste of time and a good life.
Delight, enjoyment - true and projected from within. The true man (means men and woman – the human race) does not have to play those games because He has tapped into the Author of Creation and his psyche is securely resting there – rather than being thrashed about by the world. Rather than lash out or internalize bitterness, he can draw upon other resources. For one, they are growing content with themselves before the Creator of the Universe. He delights in them and is showing it to them in more and more ways now that they are not interpreting things through the distortions of the thief. From that deep well they are able to sense delight with how God is dealing with them – as they pierce through the lies of the thief and catch onto how God works. It is a much brighter picture leading to discovering the enjoyment God has for us rather than wallowing in bitterness, as Satan would have us do.
7. Ambivalence. Uncaring, feelings gone. After wallowing in bitterness, resentment and having a pity party, we move on to resignation. That’s it! I don’t care anymore! I’m done! Can you see the progression here? Satan has taken our emotions and progressively shaken them like a dog shakes a rag doll until we just don’t care anymore. We are empty. Is that not the perfect definition of the thief stealing, killing and destroying – until we are empty? Yes it is. Stop playing his game! It goes nowhere good and ends up in destruction – your destruction. But in some ways, this realization is good. It is an indication that you are fed up with playing by Satan’s rules. Hallelujah! God is saying to you it is time to throw those rules out, be set free to love and begin to play by His rules – the truth of love. The problem is you don’t yet know how to play by His rules because you’ve been playing by the old ones for so long – and Satan wants you to throw out the relationship, rather than the rules. If he does that, he wins. Don’t play by that last rule and let him win. Throw all the old rules out. If God has brought you to this point, He believes you are ready to move on to resting in the truth rather than being thrashed about by lies. He meets you where you are and takes it from there. He affirms you. We just have to begin to be still and look to Him to begin to learn how He wants to build a true foundation of love in our hearts. One that sets us free.
Deepening love - love begets love, feelings grow. Rather than have you end up defeated as an empty vessel, God would like to do something else. The same series of circumstances interpreted and dealt with through His eyes are actually designed to deepen our love. Circumstances aren’t the problem, our reaction or response to them is. Our reactions, which are most likely based on the thief’s rules, just get us in deeper trouble. That is why we must pause before we react and be willing to be still and let God reveal and do what He wants. This takes some time to catch onto. Rather than stealing things from you leaving you empty, He pours Himself into you (as we be still and let Him) filling you to overflowing. You see, His love is based upon fact, not feeling. It is a much stronger, more secure foundation. The foundation of your love is based upon the All Powerful, All Loving God of the Universe – rather than some mere, frail human or feeling. As your love gradually sinks its roots into His heart, it finds fulfillment and security there such that as it gets healthy it can begin to venture forth and explore extending this love to others. Once you get a solid foundation and begin to feel true love for yourself as He reveals how precious you are, you are more able to love others unconditionally. You are fulfilled to overflowing. This is the best, and true way, to love. As this foundation is laid on the truth, feelings will be built upon it. But they will be solid feelings rooted in an unconditional love, not flippant feelings that have no solid roots.
8. Death of love. At this point in the thief’s rules, the worldly love dies. That was the thief’s objective all along. He’s got us where he wants us – momentarily. We have now been brought low and completely oppressed by his lies. And as God says in the first half of Proverbs 15:15, “all the days of the oppressed are wretched”. Thing aren’t looking too good in the natural progression of the thief’s approach. In reality what did you expect by believing lies. An engineer who builds something based on lies rather than the truth of physics is going to have a wretched experience. It’s not going to work. This is a “natural” path within the lies of the thief - destruction. It happens all the time. But it doesn’t have to. As I said…this is the turning point God has brought you to. Satan meant it for evil…but God meant it for good. He is affirming to you that He wants to set you free – not free from the relationship, but free from the lies that steal, kill and destroy the relationship. You must shift to resting in Him so He can begin to work together for good in rebuilding your life upon His unconditional love and in restoring the relationship. If you don’t, you are likely to let Satan continue to dominate and destroy. It will take time, and many times you’ll revert to the old lies you know so well,…but as you seek Him, He will patiently walk you out of the muck and mire and set your feet upon a rock. He’s going that way…learn to go along with Him.
Rich, fulfilling, growing love. At this stage, if we were following God’s path rather than the lies of the thief, we would have grown deep within ourselves to allow Him to be coming forth with a rich, fulfilling, growing, unconditional love. The joy of the Lord would be our strength (rather than trying to suck the life out of people and things) and rather than experiencing the “wretched” first half of Proverbs 15:15, we would be experiencing the second half – “but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.” Our heart would be overflowing with joy and able to interpret the circumstances He lays before us as part of His continual feast for us. We would interpret them at faith-value and receive His loving purpose in them, rather than see them by mere face-value and miss out on the richness of His love hidden beneath the surface. This is a far cry from where the lies of the thief take us – and leave us. This is the richness that He now wants to build in your life, since He has brought you to the point of finally exposing the lies that bind you. Remember, you must refocus your eyes upon Him rather than the relationship, to allow Him to fill you up to overflowing. If you continue to focus on the relationship to get your ultimate needs met, you will try to bite and devour it and be left desolate. It wasn’t meant to ultimately meet your needs, but contribute in a very unique way towards meeting your needs – and then God would take it from there. God wants relationships to be complimentary – meaning the gifts and abilities of one person compliment the gifts and abilities of the other. He will strongly promote that in a relationship, particularly a covenant marriage relationship. Satan wants to strip all that off and destroy the relationship, particularly the covenant marriage relationship – and he’s done a good job. Interpreting the relationship by his rules makes the complimentary gifts annoying to us. Learning to interpret them by God’s love and sovereignty reveals how they can be refreshing and complimentary to us. Yes, there still will likely be friction, but it will be the positive friction of one person sharpening the countenance of the other as iron sharpens iron. He, not the thief, wants to show you how to have the most fulfilling relationship that is literally beyond your wildest dreams. He is God. He is Awesome. That’s what an Awesome God does to be Awesome. Once it is rooted in Him, you are no longer victimized by the thief, or the way the thief plays out the relationship. Your feet are set upon the Rock of Christ and you begin to live strongly as a victor, rather than be tossed to and fro in emotional squalor like a victim. You can apply Isaiah 1:18 and begin to reason together with God. Yes, you can actually not try and be hyper-spiritual in approaching Him, but just be real and make your case to God. He’s a big boy and can take it. In fact, He desires you to be real, just as you are. He already knows how you are anyway, so us being hyper-spiritual in relating to Him is just a façade that keeps us from allowing Him to get to the real issues so He can set us free. God is safe. He took care of all your judgment on the cross and put it behind Him. And now He wants to go about the daily business of redeeming and restoring the glory of His fearfully and wonderfully made creation in you. All you have to do is reason with Him and He will meet you where you are and teach you how to be still. You will find the reasoning alone will thrill your heart as you catch onto His delight in you.