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TakeUptheCross
Member



Joined: 2016/8/10
Posts: 242
Germany

 Re:

@twayneb
It perfectly makes sense... but I think that even when God dwells in you, He does not automatically makes you for example not to be thursty or hungry anymore. Likewise, I think that He does not make our desire to be around godly people, desire to belong to His family and talk with others about Him vanish away. (And please remember I am speaking of believers). If I receive all the love I need from God, why do I ever need other people? (I know and believe God can sustain you even in exile where there is not one believer around you, but that is perhaps not the situation for most of us).

Are you getting what I am trying to say?

 2017/12/19 17:59Profile
TakeUptheCross
Member



Joined: 2016/8/10
Posts: 242
Germany

 Re:

@ginnyrose

1) I asked this because I was thinking on 1 Cor. 13 and how am I to act, if I do not "feel loved" by other believers. And as I wrote in an answer to Todd, what grasped my attention was "charity... is not easily provoked" (in German: love... does not let herself become bitter"). As I felt that I am very close to do just that. Kind of shut myself off, even if I am going to church on Sunday. After service asking one or two "How are you doing?" And then vanish away for the next 6 days. Several people told me that even in church you cannot trust everybody, and cannot share your spiritual (and even earthly) trials and problems with everybody. I agree. I understand. But does that mean that I should not share anything with anybody?! We come back to how do we define "brotherly love". Can you really love someone you do not know?

So, I was thinking "Fine. If I it is not right for me to expect love, there is no reason to be offended" or "Even if they perhaps have no clue that I feel like that, I won't be offended, cause charity is not easily provoked"

Hope you get what I am saying.

2) I know that we are loved by our Creator! And I believe He loves us, because He is Love, not because we are good enough (or have earned) to be loved.

 2017/12/19 18:29Profile
roadsign
Member



Joined: 2005/5/2
Posts: 3777


 Re:

Many great points! I’ll “grab onto” two:

Esther said:

Quote:
My question was generally about deserving the love of fellow-believers.


Is this not less about my “deserve-ability” and more about the obligation of fellow-believers? It is our duty to encourage others to mature in love. That involves holding them accountable in how they treat us.

Quote:
If I it is not right for me to expect love, there is no reason to be offended"


Very true, Sandra! But it’s escape, as in Buddhist thought: If I don’t expect anything, I will never experience the pain of lost hope. To desire and expect love is a risk - because you can get hurt. But to let hope die or to avoid hoping, is to shut yourself away from others and from God. Instead you escape into fatalism, addictions, shame, etc. Those who are shame-bound have trouble seeing themselves as worthy of love, and so they let people treat them badly with no consequence. That just enables the victim/perpetrator cycle.
Sandra, wouldn’t you say that 1 Cor. 13 establishes the way to love even when we do not “feel loved”? As Christians we can endure shattered hope -- by reaching out to our Lord who alone can love us fully.

Esther, Does that bring us closer to your original question? What if you worded it like this: “Is the Christian free to desire love?” … and then we would have to distinguish true love from false loves –and how we can love authentically.

So much to cover here!


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Diane

 2017/12/19 20:41Profile
twayneb
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Joined: 2009/4/5
Posts: 2256
Joplin, Missouri

 Re:

Quote:
It perfectly makes sense... but I think that even when God dwells in you, He does not automatically makes you for example not to be thursty or hungry anymore. Likewise, I think that He does not make our desire to be around godly people, desire to belong to His family and talk with others about Him vanish away. (And please remember I am speaking of believers). If I receive all the love I need from God, why do I ever need other people? (I know and believe God can sustain you even in exile where there is not one believer around you, but that is perhaps not the situation for most of us).

Are you getting what I am trying to say?



I do get what you are trying to say. I believe that we have often not understood what really happened to us when we were born again. We were made new creatures. All things were made new. We are now in Him. The old man is dead and the new man is alive. Christ now lives in us and we draw our life from Him. As a result, we must realize that we do not have to have the same emotions and drives that we once had. These were corrupted by sin just as the rest of our life was. But we now have access to God in such a way that our entire way of thinking and feeling is changed. This is the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2) It is not a pipe dream, it is a reality to be entered into.

I understand that it is a process. This is why we are to renew our minds. We are not to be condemned when we fall short. That has been taken care of through Christ. We are to repent (change our way of thinking about it), get up, and continue to leave the past behind as we press on toward Him.

Quote:
If I receive all the love I need from God, why do I ever need other people?



I am realizing that the needs, drives, and emotions that we all thought were so normal before we were born again are not normal for a believer. God loved us and desired us. God did not need us. If we are born again and now bear the image of the one who created us, our own drives and emotions should become conformed to His. I should never need other people. That is self-seeking. It puts the other person in a position of being a tool to satisfy a longing in me. I should desire fellowship with other people and have a yearning to love them sacrificially for their benefit. How freeing it is to enjoy fellowship with my brothers and sisters and have no cloud of expectation hanging over their heads.

That is the heart of God after all. When I am in the place of understanding and experiencing the love of the Father in intimacy, I do not feel like I deserve anything from anyone. Instead, I realize that I am put here to fulfill my place in loving that other person as Jesus loved. I cannot be hurt by that person anymore. I have absolutely no expectation of them. Instead, I find he love and compassion of the Father, through me, being extended toward them.

Hope that all makes sense.


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Travis

 2017/12/20 8:08Profile
twayneb
Member



Joined: 2009/4/5
Posts: 2256
Joplin, Missouri

 Re:

Esther: Your reply to Ginny is right on, I believe.

Quote:
So, I was thinking "Fine. If I it is not right for me to expect love, there is no reason to be offended" or "Even if they perhaps have no clue that I feel like that, I won't be offended, cause charity is not easily provoked"



There is no reason to be offended. Imagine Jesus being offended. That is hard to imagine. We know He would never have been offended. Instead, He would have looked on the person behaving inappropriately and wept with compassion over the state of their own heart. I believe that God can put that same heart (mind in the KJV) in us as was in Him.

As to our own hurts, He desires us to bring those to His feet and surrender them to Him. In their place, He puts joy and peace. Praise God, we can become like Him. This metamorphosis comes out of a place of intimacy with Him where He becomes our all in all.

About 4 months ago, I needed desperately to have God speak to my heart about some matters. I had an entire afternoon to spend with Him, and I was determined to get into His presence and not to leave until the answer came. As I prayed, the Holy Spirit told me to go to the book of Ephesians. I began to read in chapter 1. Every few verses, God would stop me and say, "Do you see what you just read? That is how much I love you." He had me read the first three chapters from the perspective of His love. When I reached the end of chapter 3, the revelation went so deep into my heart that I was jumping up and down in my kitchen, tears streaming down my face, yelling, "He loves me!" over and over again at the top of my lungs. I have not been the same since. I can hardly think about Him without tears. I wake up in the mornings, and very often my first thought is, "Wow! God loves me!"

I have found that this kind of love ushers us into intimacy. We are so confident of His love that we open up every crevice of our heart to Him. In fact, I found in Ephesians 3 that we cannot ever expect to be filled with His fullness until we begin to understand and have a true revelation of how much He loves us.

With this revelation comes a yearning to know Him more. We draw near to Him because we now know and trust His heart toward us. As we draw near to Him, He draws near to us and we experience a deeper level of relationship and intimacy with Him than we ever have before. Strength upon strength. Glory to Glory. Deeper into His divine nature. Deeper into who He is. It changes everything.


_________________
Travis

 2017/12/20 8:20Profile









 John 13:34-35

"New commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

 2017/12/20 9:43
TakeUptheCross
Member



Joined: 2016/8/10
Posts: 242
Germany

 Re:

@twayneb

I do get what you are saying but there is something I still do not understand.

Quote:
I should never need other people. That is self-seeking. It puts the other person in a position of being a tool to satisfy a longing in me.



But if all believers should never "need" other people, why do we go to church? Why do we need gifts? Why are we to serve one another, if there is no one who would receive the service? And I say again I am speaking only of believers. Jesus told the disciples: "ye also ought to wash one another's feet." (i.e. not the feet of unbelievers, but believers). So in this context, I do not understand ...

"And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:" - hHebrews 10:24

 2017/12/21 12:20Profile
TakeUptheCross
Member



Joined: 2016/8/10
Posts: 242
Germany

 Re:

@roadsign

I think you got closer with your last question. Only to add again, that we speak of brotherly love among believers. Do not think that anybody has treated me bad, and I am playing the victim. That is not the case.

 2017/12/21 12:56Profile
Gloryandgrace
Member



Joined: 2017/7/14
Posts: 1165
Snoqualmie, WA

 Re: Do we deserve to be loved?


Deserving to be loved?
12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Jesus left out our "deservings" in his command to love one another because our relation to him is not based upon deservings its based upon his will to do so.
We all have a common need in the depth of our being, which is, "a need to be loved". This need is so a part of our human make up there really is very little that compares to such a need.
With that great a need, someone asks "do we deserve to be loved"? to me the problem becomes clear, when we incorporate "deserving" into who gets our love it is evident the love issue now is no longer about the "deserving" person, its now about the giver of a love that must be deserved. This is a clever shift of focus and confuses the issue.
For a Christian, I believe this is foreign to our Lords command, foreign to the Spirit that dwells in us and in the end antithetical to everything Jesus is about.
Our relation to people is based upon our relation to Christ, therefore we love our enemies

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Jesus is teaching us a new way to view people, one that has eliminated "deserving".
I realize Savannah quoted old testament texts where judgment was pronounced upon wicked people. Love seems to be absent...according to that covenant the love and fear of God included such harsh judgment upon individuals when you were in the right place and right situation to apply it.
Our covenant through Jesus has replaced killing the pagan woman with praying for and preaching to that pagan woman. In short the expression of the love of God to the undeserving.

In many of us, there is an enigma that we face "I don't deserve love", yet we desperately need love. Jesus answers this with "what you need is found in me". He answers our needs without calling up what we deserve, this is grace and love and they both meet us in Jesus.


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Marvin

 2017/12/21 20:54Profile
twayneb
Member



Joined: 2009/4/5
Posts: 2256
Joplin, Missouri

 Re:

Quote:
But if all believers should never "need" other people, why do we go to church? Why do we need gifts? Why are we to serve one another, if there is no one who would receive the service? And I say again I am speaking only of believers. Jesus told the disciples: "ye also ought to wash one another's feet." (i.e. not the feet of unbelievers, but believers). So in this context, I do not understand



Maybe it is the word "need" that is the reason for the understanding. If I need your approval, your praise, your attention, an expression of your love to me, etc., to fulfill something in my life, then my identity comes from you. I think in the secular world they label this codependency. But if my identity is in Christ, then I will not need you to fulfill me.

This is different than needing to spend time with my brothers and sisters for mutual edification. Is it important, in actuality vital or life giving, to have fellowship with other believers? Absolutely.

But if we all come into the service worn out, worn down, not having our identity in Christ, not having spent intimate time with Him, not having built ourselves up in His presence throughout the time when we are not together with our brothers and sisters, then we will have nothing to supply to them. But God wants us to supply one to another as we are anointed by Him. (Eph. 4).

My love "needs" should be supplied in Him. If that is the case, then I will be excited about getting to come together to love on my brothers and sisters, and this is an important part of mutual edification.

Does that clarify?


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Travis

 2017/12/22 18:43Profile





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