The Power of Unconditional Love

     

  One of the ways God is teaching me this year is through my relationships, specifically close relationships that are near and dear to my heart. He is teaching me what it means to love unconditionally, and he is also preparing me to love my future husband in a way he has never been loved before. While God continues to teach me ways to love unconditionally, he also placed it on my heart to share some of these lessons with my readers. I cannot keep the hard lessons I am learning about love to myself, it’s my prayer and hope that someone reading this is inspired to love on a higher level by practicing the things I share in this blog.

      The first place to learn how to love like this is to be connected with your creator God because God is love. In order to understand what it means to love unconditionally, you have to get to know God on a personal level. This close relationship that you develop with God will help you understand his nature, the different ways he reveals himself to us (his children), as well as the depth of his undying love for you. To know God is to know about his love. Once you have an understanding of who God is and you have developed a prayer life that allows you to see into God’s heart for you, it allows you to cherish the people he has placed in your life. And this is when you truly begin to understand what it means to love someone unconditionally. 

To love unconditionally is to step outside your own comfort, your own pain, your selfish nature, and to put aside your feelings and emotions so you can fully accept a person and love them as Christ loves them. No other kind of love will stretch you as much as this love will because unconditional love is not based on feelings/emotions or logic, it’s a love that has no conditions attached to it and a love that never fails. Unconditional love will test your faithfulness, commitment, and devotion to a person, it’s a love that will kill the selfish side of you, it’s a love that you wouldn’t be able to control the outcome or the person involved, and it’s a kind of love that will push you outside your comfort zone to a place where you would be totally dependent on God; to give you the ability on to keep loving a person even after they have hurt you, disappointed you, or failed you.

It’s really important to wait upon God when you are seeking a future partner, because when you choose to marry someone outside of the will and plan of God for your life, you’ll end up miserable. There is grace and strength that comes with marrying the person God has for you, you will be able to love him/her the way God loves them because your heart will be focused on him. When you sense God’s hand is upon your relationship, even when you have every reason to be angry with this person, and may have even thought of walking away from them, God wouldn’t let you because he brought you guys together in the first place. This will also cause you to want to love them unconditionally, because you recognize that they are a gift and a blessing from God. This does not mean loving them unconditionally will come easy to you, it means you will continue to demonstrate love to them despite the challenges you face. it will make it difficult for you to walk away from that person not only because him/her is God’s best for you but also because the cost of losing them outweighs the pain/challenges you’re currently facing. In the context of a friendship unconditional love will prevent you from turning against a friend that has been loyal to you, it will prevent you from doing things in the relationship that will jeopardize the trust and believe you have in each other, and that will destroy the bond that you have in your friendship.

     One of the most powerful way of showing unconditional love to your partner is by seeing them through the eyes of faith. And by that I mean being able to see a person not as they are but who they can become, and being able to love them through the process of becoming. Unconditional love will not try to change a person instead they will become the change they would like to see in their partner. When you look at a person through the eyes of faith you’ll be able to see them beyond what they present to you on the surface. You will be able to see the side of them that no one else gets to see, you will be able to understand the true desires of their hearts and things they may not have expressed to you, you will be able to see beyond their imperfections, and get to see them as they truly are, and you will know how they desired to be loved. To love someone is to understand them. Understanding brings about a level of appreciation for your partner and everything that makes them who they are. Once you appreciate a person for who they are, you unknowingly give them the freedom to open up their essence to you.

    Often times the things that sustain a relationship is not what drew us to that particular individual. To sustain a lifelong healthy relationship is to be faithful to a person. Faithfulness means being consistent in doing the things that brings joy to the other person regardless of how we feel from day to day. When I am faithful to a person, I study him/her to find out what their needs are, what makes them happy, and I commit myself to doing those things because of the love I have for them. Love requires a great deal of sacrifice because you’re placing the other person’s needs above your own. Faithfulness means even when I am going through a difficult time I am still looking out for you, I may not have enough time on my hands but I will make time for you because you are important to me. Even though I have a lot going on in my personal life, I understand how much my support means to you, so I am going to be there for you. We just had an argument and I don’t feel like talking to you right now, but I am going to make amends, because disagreements do not keep me from loving you. Faithfulness will say I do not have a lot, but I will give you my last because I care about you and I want your needs met.

      Unconditional love is making a commitment to loving a person no matter what. When you commit to a friendship/relationship what you are really saying is: my love for you is not dependent on external factors or personal issues going on in my life. My love for you will remain in the midst of trying times, I will stay committed to you even when I am not getting my way, or when it seems like you are making things difficult for me. My love for you will not change even when you misinterpret the things I say or do, when you doubt my devotion and commitment to you/or don’t believe I am all in, and when I am having a bad day or feeling sick, I will continue to love even the parts of you that you that you may never change, or love you in spite of the problems we face in our relationship. I won’t stop loving you even when my feelings are hurt and I feel like we need some time apart from each other, when we facing financial difficulties, when either of us is trying to pursue a lifelong dream that demands a lot of our attention, you’re still number one in my life, I wouldn’t give up on you when it feels like either of us are both neglecting the needs of our relationship, or when I don’t feel like putting in the effort to making the relationship work. I am sticking to you like glue and I am never going to completely give up on you.

Unconditional love is patient with a person you are in a relationship with. It gives the other person room not to be perfect all the time. Whenever you see the other person’s flaws and shortcomings you extend grace to them because you also have areas you struggle in. You display patience by loving your partner/friends in spite of their imperfections and weaknesses, and you are also the agent of change to help strengthen those weak areas. Love will be patient with a person when they are going through a difficult time by offering support and treating him/her with kindness, love will be patient not to draw conclusions about a person they care about but will give them the benefit of the doubt. Love will continue to persevere in a relationship even when things are difficult for you guys.

I will have more to say on unconditional love in future blogs, and why it’s the most important aspect of any relationship, especially a romantic relationship. But I will stop here for now, I hope you were touched by this post in some way, and you can prayerfully apply this things Ito your relationships. Please me comments and don’t forget to share this blog with someone, you’ll never know whom you’re helping. Thanks for reading!

 

True Inspiration, One that Inspires you from Deep Within

We don’t have to look too far to find inspiration it’s all around us. We meet people every day who inspire us to do or become better. We may be drawn to people because of the gift/talent they have, it could be their incredible voice, their gift of writing, or something else about them that grasps our attention. We follow these people on social media, read about them, listen to them, and even look forward to meeting them someday in person, because they inspire us.

There are different kinds of inspiration, there is inspiration that gets us pumped or excited each time we are around such people. We are happy to be in their presence, they teach us so much in their area of expertise, but they do not necessarily produce a deep change in us, we are just pleased to be connected to them. Then there are other inspirational people we connect with; when we’re looking for answers, feeling down, or people we aspire to be like, we only search this people out when there is a need, once the need is met, we move on and only come back again when the issue arises.

Still there are other inspirational people we meet at a particular stage/phase in our lives, for example when we are going through a break-up/ struggling with being single/ in a marriage that is difficult, or when are trying to overcome a particular addiction, facing financial issues, or going through a difficult season in our life. We cross paths with this people at just the right time, and their stories, words of inspiration, books/ blogs, provide the encouragement and wisdom we need to overcome that particular situation, and we find the courage to heal. Once we get through that season or phase in our life, we do not need those people anymore because they have served their purpose in our lives and life goes on lol.

            Then there is the last group of inspirational people who impact us in a tremendous way, this encounter is divinely orchestrated. We meet this people and they completely change our life. These are people who impact us beyond the surface, they inspire us in a deep way that it touches our soul. I am talking about change in the way you view yourself, change in the way you think about things, they make you aware of gifts and strengths, you have not recognized in yourself or explored before, they cause you to want to change from within. Sometimes you do not even realize the impact such people have on you, until you get around other people who know you well, and they point out these changes to you. It’s like having a complete makeover in your life. This is what I am referring to when I speak of inspiring someone from within. Have you come across a person/s, whose story, life, music or gift, tugs on your heart and causes you to look within and evaluate your life. They are like a mirror to you reflecting to you areas in your life that are unhealed, dreams buried inside of you, weaknesses which you haven’t worked on, or maybe they brought out strengths in you that you did not realize you had.

            There is something spiritual about these encounters, at times you feel God’s presence when having conversations with them, and you begin to see the person you were created to be through their gifts because it hits home for you. I have listened to songs on the radio that touched me deeply that made me search for the artist to find out who they were, and to learn the inspiration behind their songs. I remember listening to a guest pastor preach in a program I attended, and since I came mid-way through the service I missed when he was introduced. I was so touched by his sermon, that I spent the next few days searching for him online until I found his church. I could not rest until I found out more about him, and where I could listen to more sermons from him. I have read blogs by inspirational people which transformed me profoundly and forced me to change from the inside out. 

            We do not meet people like this every day, most people fall in the first two categories I mentioned earlier. Inspirational people who produce lasting change in you, and whose impact remains even after you lose touch with them, comes with people who are anointed and set-apart by God to fulfill a higher calling. Keep in mind we need all three kinds of inspiration, because they each fulfill a purpose in our life. However, the last category is one that produces the greatest change and transformation in our lives, we cannot encounter such people and remain the same. People like this come into our life when we least expect and sometimes during the lowest moments in our life, they are like God-sent. There is always a bigger purpose why we cross paths with them which is sometimes bigger than what we can see at the moment.  There are even instances where such people may not stay in our lives forever, but their impact stays with us.

            This is the kind of impact I hope to make in the people that God sends my way, and in you if you are reading this. At the end of the day it’s not the number of people I know or have around me, but the quality of people’s lives I can change in a profound way. I may not even know all these people personally but they will always remember me because I inspired them in a deep way.

Quote on purpose

Sometimes we may find our purpose, or life’s work when we are not even searching for it or without us realizing it. We may be doing things out of boredom, out of pain, or because that’s the only thing we have to do or offer at that particular time. But somewhere along the line what we have to offer is what a particular group of people need, and something they have been praying or searching for. So what began as something to do in the meantime or as way of venting out our frustration turns into something that makes a great impact in people. That’s the moment, you begin to realize maybe I was born to do this, or maybe this is related to my purpose in some way. Sometimes our purpose is brought to us in the most unexpected ways- Blessing Charity