Happy Valentines Day! 

Love is more than anything all we truly need. To be loved to be a part of something, so life feels like a big hug.

There are many definitions of what this love looks like and feels like, but more than any it looks like family.  A family is safe place where you are accepted, where people believe in you and where you can go when you mess up and need uplifting.  When I picture and imagine a safe and secure family the practices and respect outlined in 1 Cor. 13 are out pouring and forgiveness is complete and bountiful like Christ’s.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Cor. 13 4-7)

Unfortunately, many of us did not grow up with this version of family or a healthy experience of love.  For many, love is something that you earn, something you get for fitting into and conforming to someone’s version of who THEY want you to be.  When you succeed you are loved, then you are accepted into the circle and if you step out of their way of thinking you might very well be thrown out.  This threat of losing love always lingers and it is very opposite than the 1 Cor. Passage above.

For this Valentine’s Day give yourself the gift of FULLY LOVING WHO YOU ARE – A CHILD OF GOD!!

Love is LOVE, it is giving, accepting, kind and inclusive in it’s very nature.  If you have to earn it, it is not love.  If you have to fit into anyone’s mold but God’s mold for you, then it is not love. If it is covered in judgment, should’s and expectation then it is not love. And if it is illegal or unkind it is not love. Love can never be lost or earned, only given.

God is love.  (1 John 4)

God asks us to love each other like we LOVE ourselves.  Yet, how are we supposed to love at all if all the love we have ever received has been the false love of judgment and fear, even if that fear is the fear of having this love be taken away?

The one person’s love, besides Gods that cannot be taken from you is the love you have for yourself.

This Valentine’s Day connect and rekindle your love for yourself.

Without judgment or fear; one of my friends once told me to marry myself and then become the spouse. Be the kind of person you love.  This love overflows and God fills your cup moment by moment for God is this love.
(1 John 4)

How to rekindle love for yourself –

Step 1 – Ask God to teach you about love, about His very nature and to show you how much He loves you.   (IT IS A LOT, no matter what you have done or been or said, HIS love covers all.) When I first ask this about a year ago, my whole world shifted in a breath.  You see there are a few things God can not do…. 

 

 

 

 Step 2 – Feel your very nature.

Often we build walls up and are afraid to feel.  I am not speaking about the emotional feelings the ones that can easily be judged and deemed as either right and good or wrong and bad.  I am speaking of the visceral feeling of your very heart beat, of your very nature, your own vibration.  Just sitting and experiencing being in this state of feeling is loving and accepting yourself and that is love in action.

For a daily 15 minute HUG to let go and let God show you your true nature as His child, an heir to heaven along side Christ.  (Romans 8)

Follow our daily prayer and heart centering meditation at https://www.blogtalkradio.com/antiqua

Step 3 – Forgive, forgives, forgive

Yourself and God – for your any feelings, shame, bad habits, for letting yourself down, allowing others to continue to hurt you, for hurting others…etc. Allow God to purify your heart back to His original design, for God creates all things good!  ALL things – you will find that you are lovable, lovely, and good within.

Then make ever day a day of love, for as you love yourself with this kind of grace, this grace will pour from you. To dive into this well love and grace within yourself  The Joy Club is a magnificent tool – join here.

Step 4 – You are a part of God’s family. Be it on heaven or on earth or both, you belong.

You are loved and if ever you need reminding of that (which we all do at times) just call, call on God, call on me, call on our community, your church or call a prayer line.

On my journey searching for love I have forgotten to look to God and I have believed that love was earned, sometimes inappropriate and nearly always conditional.  But now through God’s grace I know this is not love at all.  For what I was seeking as a child and what many of my clients sought was manipulation and for all of us who only know this “love” it takes great courage to let go and let God love us or anyone else, because of our own fears around love.

Knowing love is a continuous journey in God’s grace.  God will never forsake you, nor will you ever be truly separate from whom He created you to be –  so love you.  By learning to love you, you will learn to be loved and to love in the ways God intended us to live in His love beyond any worldly way and within His ever loving grace.

Happy Valentines Day ~ Thank you for being a part of this family, I love you.

Antiqua