Love: Feelings, Fact or Facade - Encouragement Café - April 4, 2017
Love: Feelings, Fact or Facade
By Allison Herrin
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
But if anyone obeys His word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. 1 John 2:5 NIV
So many years, I searched… settling for much less than what my Heavenly Father wanted for me; desperately trying to find love. The desire for love penetrates very deeply into the heart of a woman.
Depending upon her past, she may give of her heart freely without reservation, and the recipient will be the most blessed man on earth; or she will construct walls around her wounded heart, forbidding love to cross the threshold that she has come to protect so diligently.
That’s what I had done. The walls were so high that nothing or no one was getting in. You see, our first experience with love is supposed to be from our parents.
When we, as daughters, are not loved and affirmed by our fathers, something devastating happens inside of us. A part of us dies, and we begin to search for that love and affirmation from wherever we can obtain it.
My father wasn’t able to love me the way he should have due to a prison sentence that he was enduring through the most impressionable time of my life, middle and high school. My step-father, through sexual abuse, was showing me what love was the wrong way.
Because of my past, I spent many, many years desperately seeking the love that my heart yearned for. I never found it until I met Jesus. After many broken hearts, a divorce and many nights of giving myself away to men who would be gone tomorrow, I finally gave up the fight.
When I gave up the desperate search for love and affirmation from men who could never give it to me and finally turned to Jesus, I experienced love, real love, for the very first time. So you see love is not the emotions we feel.
Emotions are too fleeting, always coming and going. True love, comes from our dedication to God that stems from understanding His deep love for us.
What about you? Are you chasing after something today that can never fulfill you? What is it that temporarily fills that hole in your heart? Shopping? Alcohol? Men? What is it for you?
Will you allow Jesus, the only One who is able, to fill that hole in your heart? After all, our heavenly Father is the One who put it there; a remarkable design that was made to lead us directly to Him.
Heavenly Father, we know that You gave us that hole in our heart as a compass that would lead us to You. You put it there so that we would search for You and find You. Forgive us for trying to fill it with other things. As we abandon our false notions of love and look to You, fill us with Your presence and Your love, the only love that satisfies. In Jesus’ Name, Amen!
© 2017 by Allison Herrin. All rights reserved.
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