Perfect Love: The Remedy For Distorted Love
“For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”
2 Corinthians 5:14 New International Version (NIV)
Love
I remember sitting on my bed and staring at the wall as my best friend’s words echoed throughout my mind. “You have to allow yourself to receive God’s love, Riva! We all do.” I had no idea that our conversation would result in God taking me on a seven-year journey of understanding what He spoke through her that day. A few months later, the Holy Spirit led me to reflect on the conversation. In reflection, the Holy Spirit highlighted that past traumas had distorted my foundational views and beliefs of love. Our foundational relationships (parents, first friends, or romantic partners) lay the bedrock of our beliefs about love. My past then negatively impacted my ability to receive love in the present. The journey of healing from distorted love started with the realization that my love for God, myself, and others was based on unrealistic, transactional, and conditional terms. Believing that love is transactional and having difficulty receiving love has impacted my ability to go after and receive the joy, peace, and blessings God desires to give His children.
Self-Love
After having a reflection session with the Holy Spirit while taking a shower, He highlighted how my beliefs limited my relationship with myself. The ugly core beliefs (‘I am unworthy” and “I am not good enough”), which are lies from the enemy, perpetuated my distorted views of love. The Holy Spirit helped me to see that self-love became a struggle to practice because of my beliefs. And because I allowed those beliefs to guide my actions, I often found myself in cycles of self-sabotage. I would ruminate on what I could have, should have, and would have done, but I struggled to identify a way to move forward. I lost my motivation to be consistent in loving myself because I believed that I could not trust myself to do the things I needed to do for myself, like setting boundaries, accomplishing goals, or remaining consistently disciplined. I struggled to believe that good things could happen to or for me because of the cycles of self-sabotage. My heart had become so hardened that when I received genuine and unconditional love, it made me feel uncomfortable and caused me to question if I was worthy of receiving it.
Loving Others
Regarding others, my ideal of the “perfect” relationship was built on transactional love based on performance, also known as people-pleasing. I measured my relationships with others by how much I could give to them, and when I had nothing to offer, I questioned my value and worth. The sad thing is that in my attempt to receive love from others, I constantly felt isolated, rejected, and unworthy because of my connection to people who also held distorted perceptions of love. Subsequently, everyone and everything was put on trial in my mind. At best, the suspicion was my attempt to “protect” myself from further hurt or disappointment. However, since suspicion is rooted in fear, I ended up rejecting relationships that were good for me. Trauma is tricky in that way that even innocent people or situations would increase my suspicion because of thoughts like, “This is too good to be true. This can’t be real. Something bad is bound to happen to mess this up.”
The Love of God
The journey of healing became even more painful when I realized how my distorted perceptions of love impacted my relationship with God. My perceptions of what it meant to be a daughter of the Heavenly Father were distorted. At times, I felt like an orphan. And subsequently acted as an orphan because of my beliefs. The truth was that I did not always feel worthy of receiving God’s unconditional love or promises (peace, hope, joy, prosperity, etc.). Overall, I noticed how I slowly lost hope in God’s plans for my life. As God began unfolding His love to me, I initially struggled to accept Him and resisted quite a bit. Despite my struggles, the Holy Spirit helped me to recognize, through my knowledge of mental health theories, that my negative perceptions of Him stemmed from the strained relationships that I experienced with my parents. Due to their struggles with mental health and emotional invalidation, my parents unknowingly repeated the vicious cycle of passing on their habits, hurts, and hangups to me. So, their correction and guidance often felt critical and condemning. There was little room for grace in my early interactions with them. And because of my combined experiences, I did not see myself as worthy of my Heavenly Father’s love or grace- especially if I did not prove that I was “perfect enough” to receive it. After all my reflection, I recognized that my human relationships caused me to view God as unreliable, judgmental, harsh, and forceful. Does this sound familiar to you?
The Journey of Healing
The most challenging part of this journey has been renewing the beliefs that led me to see God as a harsh dictator from whom I was unworthy of receiving love. Accepting my beliefs to actively make changes has been nothing short of painful as I have experienced an array of emotions, from sadness to anger. As I mentioned earlier, I had turned the people-pleasing tendencies toward God. My consistent action and determination to be “pleasing” to Him would be short-lived because I often missed the mark. I became hypersensitive to my sins and stuck in a cycle of constantly ensuring that I was “right” with Him. This increased my tendency to reflect critically on my performance. I felt I could “never do enough to please” God. I’d sin (overeat, oversleep, procrastinate, operate in fear, and so on) and then beat myself up for doing what I said I wouldn’t do. Then I’d condemn and shame myself for struggling to remain consistent. The cycle continued. And yes, His love languages are trust and obedience. He makes it very clear that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and His shed blood are what make someone righteous. Not how much you can work to do things in your own strength and self-righteousness. He also makes it even more evident that He gives the free gift of his grace or “strength” to help overcome and improve in the areas where you are weak.
Along this journey of healing, He led me to a place where even when people, places, or things came together as proof of His love for me. And the more I renewed my mind with the truth of the word of God and relinquished control to trust and believe Him. My consistent effort in believing His truth allowed Him to love me in unique and special ways. As a result, I experienced more peace, mercy, and acceptance. I also noticed an increase in my ability to extend unconditional love and acceptance to myself and others. He made sure that I became firm in believing in and receiving His love for me as a Creator, Savior, Helper, Lord, Friend, and, more importantly, as my Father.
Compelling Love
I take joy in saying that the process of complete and total deliverance from that mindset continues by God’s grace and mercy. It seemed challenging to move forward initially, but the journey of uncovering God’s love for me and accepting His love has been beautifully challenging. However, God, in being His intentionally loving self, knew exactly how to fix my faulty foundation. He started by increasing my understanding of the unconditional love that a parent can have for a child. If you are a parent, you understand the depth of that type of love. It may be challenging to understand if you are not yet a parent or have experienced strained relationships with your parents. However, imagine, for a moment, someone that you deeply care about. Everything you do will be to please the person or to ensure that they are safe, well, and know that they are loved. That’s exactly what God began to do: be extremely intentional in revealing His unique and very specific ways of affirming His love for me. Whether it was through prophecy, a song that I’d hear, or through reading scripture, He continued to highlight His love for me. I became in awe of His love after being able to see and receive Him as a perfect parent. My love grew deeper and stronger. Then, I understood that although He doesn’t enjoy seeing me mess up, not follow His instructions, or stray away in my heart, He still loves me through it all. And the revelation of His unconditional love has helped me to stray less and less. He also intentionally showed me that being loving is part of his nature when He instructed me to pray with others. I have had endless encounters in which the Holy Spirit would give me words of knowledge or words of wisdom about strangers that I did not know. And they would respond by praising God for hearing their prayers or acknowledging their struggles through someone they didn’t know. And learning how He loves each one of us specifically inspired my heart to love Him more.
Love Overcomes
Remember that the enemy plans to destroy our worth and beliefs about love completely. When a distorted perception of love negatively impacts your worth, God’s sovereignty(His power, grace, and mercy) can be overlooked and undervalued. And that is the danger of being locked into a distorted perception of love. However, you can praise God for Jesus’s sacrifice of love on the cross that compels or “urges” you to focus on growing deeper in your understanding of the love of God. Remember that through the deepening of your understanding, the Holy Spirit will ensure that gratitude, joy, strength, and mercy will overflow to you and aid in the process of your healing.
I hope this post has inspired you to examine the faults in your foundation. More importantly, I hope that sharing my testimony has helped reignite your desire to uncover God’s unique and intentional love for you. I pray that if you feel unworthy, you will be showered with a random act of love that you know could only come from God Himself.
With Love,
Riva
SALVATION
I’d like to believe that everyone who reads this blog has a personal relationship with Jesus, but if you have yet to make it official and just so happened to stumble upon this blog, know that you can establish that relationship and receive all of His Awesome Promises in a few easy steps.
Pray (speak out loud with your mouth) the Salvation Prayer based on the scripture listed below.
Connect to a local church to further your walk and build community.
Read Your Bible as often as possible. Click here to discover helpful scriptures and Bible plans to read.
Scriptural Reference
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”
ROMAN 10:9-11
Prayer
LORD JESUS, I CONFESS MY SINS AND ASK FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS. I BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD AND DIED ON THE CROSS FOR ME AND THEN ROSE IN THREE DAYS. PLEASE COME INTO MY HEART AS MY LORD AND SAVIOR. TAKE COMPLETE CONTROL OF MY LIFE AND HELP ME TO WALK IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS DAILY BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. THANK YOU, LORD, FOR SAVING ME AND FOR ANSWERING MY PRAYER. IN JESUS’ NAME. AMEN.
