where did you get your definition of love?
Where do your definitions and experiences of love come from? The ways you have seen and experienced love will determine how you show it to others. You can only give to others what you have first experienced. For most people, their understanding of love has come from parents, family, friends, or media. As good as any of these may have been, they are all flawed at some point. None of them were perfect. They all had their weak points of inconsistency, unfaithfulness, impatience, being unforgiving, and selfish.
If they are the only ways you have experienced love, then your experiences in showing love to others will look much the same.
Love, however is something much greater than the best people in our life ever expressed to us. At its origin, it is patient, forgiving, understanding, faithful, merciful, gentle, never gives up, and is available even when I am undeserving of it.
Its that kind of love we long for. Its that kind of love we dream of. But just because we’ve never seen or experienced it, doesn’t mean that it does not exist. That kind of love is available – it flows from the heart of God. When I genuinely accept it without resistant and refusal, that kind of love changes me.
When I realize I can’t earn it, never will deserve it, quit trying to pay it back, and humbly allow myself to be loved by God, it causes my heart to be reborn. It causes me to be different. It changes how I see life. It changes love others. Then I have a new definition and experience of love. How much of this love have you allowed yourself to receive?
You can only give to others what you have first received.
Tags: definition, love
