finding freedom in unconditional love

hello again! I am so happy to be writing this blog finally! some big things have been happening over the past 6 months or so in my walk with the Lord, but I feel like I am finally at a place to put it into words, so here goes!

I have spent my entire life in church and I met Jesus personally at 8 years old so Christian theology is nothing new to me. I knew that God created the heavens and the earth and that after the fall of man there was a separation formed between God and man that we could never cross in our own strength. But, God loved us deeply and wanted to be with us, so He sent His only son to come to earth, live a perfect life, then die, taking on all the weight of our sins so that we could be reunited with our Heavenly father who loves us unconditionally and wants to be with us in every moment. I believed almost all of these truths with every ounce of my being… the key word is “almost all”.

While I knew that God loved me unconditionally, it was a concept that I don’t think I fully grasped until this past year, and my lack of belief in this seemingly simple truth was evident in my life. While I would spend my time reminding friends and family of how much God loved them, I questioned whether or not He really loved me as much as the bible told me He did. While I would have conversations with non-believers laying out the gospel for them and telling them about a God who loves them so much that nothing they have done or will do can alter that love an INCH, I would spend nights laying in bed making mental checklists of things I had to do to make sure that God would keep loving me. 

I was telling other people about a God who loved based on LOVE, while I was believing in a God who loved based on performance. It wasn’t until this year that I truly began to recognize this fault in my belief system, and it caused me to fall into a really hard place. Having new revelations about who God is isn’t always as glamorous or easy as some people make it look. Realizing that something I had believed about God for almost 10 years was so far from the truth was confusing, frustrating, painful, and hard. It took a lot of days of me choosing to dig into the scriptures and have hard conversations and admit to things that I wouldn’t even have seen as a problem 6 months ago. But—being on the other side of this has been one of the most freeing things of my entire life so far.

For 9 years I had based my relationship with God solely on what I was “bringing to the table”. I would have thoughts like “I need to do ___ so that God will be proud of me” or “I can’t believe I did ___, there is no way that God loves me right now”. And while I would never have admitted to these thoughts while I was sitting around a table in a small group full of people that I was trying to impress, they were there. every single day. and the hardest part is I didn’t see anything wrong with them.

BUT GOD! My two favorite words ever! He never stopped pursing my stubborn self and here we are today, writing a blog about it as I am getting ready to go across the world with strangers for HIM because of how much I love Him! The past year has been full of gentle whispers from the Lord telling me, in the most loving way, “its not about you.” I am slowly learning that I simply don’t have the power to alter God’s love for me with my actions. I am resting in a place of humility and meekness before Him because there is freedom there. there is freedom in the fact that even if I try to make Him love me any less, I CAN’T. and that is some good news if I’ve ever heard it.

I have found that living in the freedom of knowing that his love has NO conditions or parameters has made me more fruitful, not less. The reason being, I am not focused on the fruit, I am focused on Him. Its the simple idea of “I do because I love” not “I am loved because I do”. He has reminded me time and time again that he does not love me because I am an asset to Him, because frankly, I’m not. He does not need me to accomplish anything He wants to do, but he chooses me every day because He loves me. So I am learning to rest in that and simply love Him every day. not to make Him proud or get anything in return, but because He is my Father and I love Him so deeply. 

This was tough to write and put out there but I hope that my story can speak to yours somehow and that the Lord has used my words to reveal more of Himself to you! Isn’t He just so good?! I love you all dearly, thank you for reading!

His love + mine,

bree