Uninvited - Living Loved

"Live from the abundant place that you are loved, and you won't find yourself begging others for scraps of love."

Uninvited - Lysa TerKeurst

Now I know this is a topic we've discussed before but I feel that it's an important one. Do you live loved? Do you love yourself? Now I know there is times when you feel less than and do not love yourself. I get it, I look at my flaws (that really only I see) and don't love myself.

It's easy to live loved when I feel loved. It's hard to live something you sometimes do not feel. If we end up not feeling loved, we become slaves to our runaway emotions and assumptions. Why do we allow our days to be dictated by the moods of other people? Since I work in Customer Service it's very easy to not feel loved when we allow others moods to change our mood. It's easy to allow rejection to make us feel unloved.

In Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV), "The Lord your God is in your midst, a might one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." He is in our midst and will quiet us with His love. His love...the one love that trumps all others. We forget when the going gets tough that He has loved us first and will love us last. His love conquers all!

Here's something to remember: "The gravity of living in a sin-soaked world will always try to hold us back from living loved. But if we will remember to return often to our Instruction...our Creator...we will discover His loving hands still pulse to continue making us. Tweaking us. Molding us. Filling us. And daily completing the good work He began in us." -Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst

The thing is, we believe we had prayed about things but in reality we talk to our friends about it, worried about it and tried to solve it ourselves. Our souls are grasping for something more, we are grasping for God and too distracted with the things in the world. We look for solutions to our feeling on being unloved with everything else except the one thing that will fill us, the One that loves us.

I, like most of us is guilty of this. I tend to run to those I trust instead of going to God. Don't get me wrong I trust God completely but I am the type that I want an answer right away and if I don't get it, rejection and hurt set in. My emotions take over.

In Him. With Him. By Him.

This next passage is a bit long but it's my favorite part of this chapter so please bear with me. When I first read this section, it brought tears to my eyes because it described my life exactly at this moment.

"Imagine a little girl running with a cup in her hand sloshing out all it contains. She thinks what will refill her is just ahead. Just a little farther. She presses on with sheer determination and clenched teeth and an empty cup clutched tight.

She keeps running toward and agenda He never set and one that will never satisfy. She sees Him and holds out her cup. But she catches only a few drops as she runs by Him, because she didn't stop long enough to be filled up. Empty can't be tempered with mere drops.

The tragic truth is what will fill her-what will fill us-isn't the accomplishment or the next relationship ahead. That shiny thing is actually a vacuum that sucks us in and sucks us dry...but never has the ability to refill. I should know, because that's where I was. There's no kind of empty quite like this empty: where your hands are full but inside you're nothing but an exhausted shell." - Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst

How often have you felt like that little girl or little boy? How often have you been running trying to fill your cup with what you think is right only to have an empty cup at the end? I have felt this way for a while myself. I depend too much on what others think of me, what others think I should do, what I think of me and what I think I should do. I tend to forget that through it all, He is the one I should be asking first. He is the one I should be running to.

"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." John 15:7 (NASB)

Jesus doesn't participate in the rat race. He's into the slower rhythm of life, like abiding, delighting and dwelling. We have to trust Him with our place and our pace. We will feel the fullness when we remember to be with Him. When we abide in Him, He lines up our desires with his desires for us. We become complete and know that we are loved and ready to serve. He promises stability.

I encourage you, take some time and really look into the time you are spending with God. Are you spending the right time? Are you feeling fulfilled? Are your living loved because you know you're loved? There's no judgement here as it's something I am always working on.

One last thought..."God's love isn't based on me. It's simply placed on me. And it's the place from which I should live...loved."

*Bold quotes are from the book Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst