Free To Love

When we receive the revelation of God’s Love for us and know how he sees us, we can love ourselves the way He loves us.  

When we can love ourselves, we can love others the way God wants us to love.

When we are free to love others the way God wants us to love them, then we can extend grace to them the way God extends grace to us.  

Being free to love also helps us not to walk in fear, and it comes in many forms.

Being free to love helps us to extend grace to our spouses when they make mistakes.  

Being free to love helps us to extend grace to our kids when they make mistakes.

Being free to love helps us to extend grace to others around us.

I have not gotten upset with my husband and kids because I can extend the same kind of grace and love I receive from God. I want the same measure of grace and love when I make mistakes.

I don’t focus on their mistakes. I focus on their goodness. 

I see their mistakes as no big deal in my freedom to love. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move forward.  

Why would I get upset with them? 

When God doesn’t get upset with me but opens His arms up, inviting me to run to Him, allowing Him to love me through the change I need to make, correcting my mistakes, then we extend the same to our loved ones.

When you think about it, we often get upset with our loved ones when they make a mistake out of fear.  

It’s fear of what are people going to think of us.  

Fear of them judging how we are being a parent to our kids as their behavior is the outcome of our parenting skills. Who cares what people think about your parenting skills? It’s between you and God. 

It could be fear of your spouse not living up to your expectations.  

Your spouse is not ever going to live up to your expectations.  

Don’t put expectations upon them.  

Yes, some boundaries need to be placed, and there is a level of wanting them to live and do what they committed themselves to do when you said, “I do,” to each other.  

But don’t put your whole expectation on them. 

 In case you haven’t noticed yet, they aren’t perfect, like you aren’t perfect. 

They will continue to disappoint you if you let them by focusing on their weakness instead of their strengths. Focus on their strength and the goodness they extend to you; you won’t notice their weakness as much. 

Put your expectations on God, who is perfect and will never fail you.  

When we are free to love and unexpected things that come up in our family dynamic, it won’t faze us so much.

 The husband could be running late coming home from work, and you guys got to be somewhere in a few minutes. Kids spilled their milk, and while trying to catch their falling glass, they knocked their favorite vase over and broke it.  

You are looking at the mess, thinking we will be late. I don’t have time to clean this mess up; what are those expecting us to think?

When I am walking in free to love, I have found that those things don’t faze me much anymore. 

 I am not concerned with what those who are expecting us to think. I will explain why we are late.  

I can clean up the mess without getting upset with the kids and look at my broken vase as just an object that can be replaced, but my child can’t be replaced. So, I chose my words carefully toward them.  

When my late husband walks through the door, instead of looking at him with firing darts eyes, I can look at him with understanding eyes.

 When we are free to love, we can do what needs to be done without getting upset with everyone, and at times, we can laugh at the chaos of things.  

Believe me. We can.  

Of course, I haven’t always been able to do this, and it’s not always perfect, but I see a new change in me. To be able to do so, the more I receive the revelation of God’s love for me.  

It’s so freeing to walk in love and grace toward others, like God’s walk in love and grace toward us.  

But we can’t entirely do so without knowing how to love ourselves first. Knowing how to love ourselves is knowing God’s love for us first. 

Choose to extend the same grace and love toward your loved ones and others as God extends His love and grace to you.

What does love look like?  

Let’s look at what the Bible says about what true love looks like in the next post, “What Love Looks Like.”

 P.S. 

(The story I used as an example, is something I could think of at the moment, as my kids are grown up adults, and I haven’t had spilled milk in a while.)