Hang-ups About Love and Recapturing the Truth

Hang-ups about love leaked from emotionally expensive experiences. ~Jo Ann Fore

Often, we hold misconceptions about love from personal experiences.

Maybe we formed wrong ideas about love from our childhood. 

Or, somewhere along the way, we experienced a lack of love, abandonment, abuse, neglect or broken promises and a broken heart. 

But if we uncover the misconceptions, hang-ups, emotionally expensive experiences caused in our hearts regarding love, we discover the truth.

Hang-ups: Overuse and misuse of the term love. 

We use the term love to describe affections for everything from possessions and food to our favorite sports teams and music. 

You might hear me say, “I love cinnamon rolls, chai tea lattes, sunsets, boots or pasta.” Likewise, we may use “hate” for things we don’t like.

Even if the good Lord never intended our overuse and misuse of the word love in this way, it’s a part of our culture. 

And when I love and I hate are so carelessly thrown around, our hearts may not distinguish between when love’s attached to emotions and people and when it’s not.

Uncovering hang-ups about love, formed from emotionally expensive experiences, helps us discover the truth. Share on X

Hang-ups: When love is missing.

How many kids have made statements like: 

“My dad worked a lot to give me the world, but all I wanted was for him to love me.” 

Or, “My mom immersed herself in volunteering at school and in the community and helping others. But all I wanted from her was love.” 

Working and providing for our family is necessary, but it never stops there. When we also provide love and ourselves, our family notices the difference. 

God is our example of this kind of love. We may sacrifice our loved ones on the altar of our aspirations, but God sacrificed His Son to provide true love to us.

We can never say, “All I wanted was for my heavenly Father to love me.”

Hang-ups: Human love can be fickle. 

People claim to fall out of love or to lose a loving feeling for someone.

Yet, God loved us in the womb. He loves us today, tomorrow, and every day in the future.

We look back and see God’s love in our lives, plugging in the holes where it was missing. We see assurance of it in our present lives. And since this higher love never falls out of love and is not based on feelings, we never lose it. 

With people, love sometimes has both starting and ending points.

A spouse may say, I don’t love you anymore. A family member may claim to hate us. But God’s love had a place to start but not a place to end. Because His is a never-ending love.

With people, love sometimes has both starting and ending points. But God’s love had a place to start but not a place to end. Because His is a never-ending love. Share on X

We struggle to love ourselves and others. God never struggles with loving. So we ask God to help us wrap our minds around the way He loves.

A believable and healing love.

Sometimes we struggle to believe people really love us due to the way they fail us, break promises or mistreat us. 

Our heavenly Father wants us to believe how much He loves us. But regardless of our belief or unbelief, it never changes anything about His love. 

God loves me. God loves you. This is a truth no one can make untrue.

This kind of godly love from the Lord is a healing love. It covers and heals our wounds and scars from our emotionally expensive experiences.

Still further, forgiveness allows true love to come into our heart, not only for those who left us or hurt us, but for us. You see, God’s solid and sure love makes a way for us to forgive people of their love missteps against us. 

What people made fake, God made true.

Every wrong thing we learned from experiences about love, God helps us unlearn, then learn the truth in order to receive and practice real love. 

It requires the right knowledge. Since love originated with God, He’s our knowledge base to the facts. God made something true that people made fake.  

The fake forms of love people created never make God’s love less true. Instead, we are loved the way He says we are loved. 

To believe and know the truth about real love, we write out and pray these Scriptures over ourselves: love lays down His life for me (John 15:13); perfect love drives out my fear (1 John 4:18-19); God quiets me with His love, singing over me (Zephaniah 3:17); God redeems my life from the pit and crowns me with love (Psalm 103:4); love from God stands firm forever (Psalm 89:2), and because of the Father’s love, He calls me His child (1 John 3:1). 

When we know God loves us, we live differently. 

We choose to live loved by the Savior and walk in freedom. Then we won’t waste another minute believing something about love God didn’t say.

We choose to live loved by the Savior and walk in freedom. Then we won’t waste another minute believing something about love God didn’t say. Share on X

Will you make the choice to recapture the truth about love? 

Read, Good News and God News About Love

Sometimes I participate in these link-ups:

Legacy Linkup/Inspire Me Monday/Tell His Story/Recharge Wednesday/Let’s Have Coffee/Tune in Thursday/Heart Encouragement/Embracing the Unexpected/Candidly Christian and Faith On Fire.

© 2021 by Karen Friday, All rights reserved

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Our recent podcast discusses this theme in more detail and a few of our recent YouTube adventures.