He Doesn't Have to Love Us

I love doing Bible studies.  I love sitting around the table with women of all ages and just "doing life" with them.  I love the wisdom that comes from knowing that others have been there.  Most of all, I love learning that there are things that God wants me to know in the quietness of the room filled with only Him and me.

The ladies of our church just started a new study called Seamless by Angie Smith, whom I have grown to love over the years by way of her blog.  I can already tell this study is going to change my life.  In short, this study is designed to take you on a 6-week journey through the Bible as seamless story.  I am on the first week and I have already learned so much that I did not know.  I don't consider myself a beginner, necessarily, but I am certainly not a Bible expert.  I have just fallen in love with this study in a very short period of time, and my prayer is that it will allow me to fall deeper in love with Jesus.  

This morning, Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:00 am.  Not by choice, mind you.  This seems to be a recurring theme on my blog posts.  Anyway, I put some clothes in the wash and came to the office for my Bible reading.  Jesus met me here.  I want to share with you what He taught me this morning because, somehow I have a feeling, someone else needs this truth this morning too.

"The greatest freedom and joy you will ever know are wrapped up in God's work, offered as a gift from the King of all kings." ~Angie Smith, Seamless

About five years ago, when I decided to stop running from God and surrender my life to Christ {fully}, I felt that I needed to speak to certain people regarding my abortion experience before speaking publicly about it.  I had already confessed everything to God but there were a handful of people in my life that I knew thought would be heartbroken if they found out at the same time everyone else did.  Many of them were very understanding and to my surprise, everyone I shared my story with still loved me and embraced me with kindness and friendship.  There was one person that I was very nervous about talking to.  She was like a mother to me.  When I met with her, although devastated, she embraced me, loved me, and our relationship has only gotten better.  The situation was very intense and at one point, through sobbing, I remember looking at her and saying, "I was afraid to tell you because you don't have to love me."  Her response was, "Yes, I do.  I want to."  I don't think that I will ever ever forget that moment.  

This morning, Day 4, in my Bible study, written on the page of my book, Angie writes, 

God doesn't have to love you, but He does.

Please understand me.  I am not saying that Christi is God but in the very intimate moment of me telling her something that, what I believed, could have destroyed our relationship, she could have turned away and said, "This is too much."  But she didn't.  She loved me and she did not have to.  God loves us and He does not have to, He WANTS to.  That is such a powerful thing to me. When I read that, all of those emotions came back to me.  The good news is that God is never going to stop loving us no matter what we have done!  Angie goes on to say,

You can't do anything to earn it, because you're flawed in ways that make your best efforts completely useless.

I am going to say this more for me than anyone but STOP TRYING SO HARD!!!  I am a perfectionist.  I am.  I admit it.  God does not need anything from us.  We are enough.  He loves us.  
We are enough because He is enough.


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