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Observation

Love is not love. We use the term so freely that I can love my coffee. But the love that we were made for is a love of a different kind. It is give love. I love coffee because of what I get from my coffee but give me a bad cup that doesn’t deliver my desired get, then I hate coffee. This is not love at all. But this is the love of the world and the love we are trying to get. So we dress up, paint up, pay up, anything it takes to get loved up. No wonder we are so desperate for love.
But the love of heaven is different, it is give love. It’s an unselfish love that doesn’t ask what’s in it for me, it just gives. It does not measure the desirability, the loveliness, the I get turned on by, the what’s in it for me, of the one who is being loved. Unselfish love doesn’t need any of this. God is not turned on or aroused, or impressed, or made to love, his love is give love, unselfish love, it only looks to give. And this is the love we were all designed for. We were designed to receive this love and from the intimacy of that personal revelatory encounter of his unselfish love we go and reflect, be that same unselfish love. And the more we return to love the more we “let this unselfish love increase and flow through you.” This is the way God teaches you, unselfish love. From his love, it’s encounter then reflect.
I realise just how transactional my love can be. I give to get, I give to earn love credit that I can cash in. And if you don’t love me back I withdraw my love for the return on my love investment is not a ‘good’ return. When we love like this, with this self-love, then we miss the beauty of unselfish love, and we don’t know how to receive this love from God. We continually approach him with a transactional love stance, and if any of us are real with ourselves, we know we don’t deserve his love, we know that we don’t arouse, or are unloveable to a holy God. So we miss the love we need to be the love others need. We must hear the invitation to close the cash register on transactional love and come and receive unselfish love that we may be this love. Be loved be love.

Application

I am not looking to be loveable in order to be loved. I am coming to the house of unselfish love, dwelling in his presence and love, and allowing the transforming effect of his love to transform my love. I become unselfish love from the beauty of being unselfishly loved, this will be my posture all my days. I will let your unselfish love increase in me so that it may flow through me.

Response

Thank you for your unselfish love. Thank you that you turn upside down the get love story of this world and transform it into a give love story. Thank you that your desire to love me, is you, it’s not something you work at, it’s the essential nature of your being, for you are unselfish love. Thank you for who I am becoming as I live in your unselfish love. I love this love life.

Meditation

Meditate – let this unselfish love increase and flow through you more and more.
Consider:
How much of your love story is shaped by get love?
Do you know, not intellectually but experientially, the unselfish love of God? Do you have a rhythm of being loved by him this way?