Today’s post is a continuation of the blog series I’m doing on 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, but power, love and self-discipline.”
You can read part 1 on power here.
God not only gave love but God is love. We see his love for us all throughout the bible. The most well known scripture that sums up how much God loves us is “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
After reading that verse it doesn’t make too much sense how the God of the universe could love us so much yet so many of us are wandering about life feeling everything but loved and searching for love in all the wrong places. The opposite of love is fear. As we just read in 2 Timothy God didn’t give us a spirt of fear but a spirt of love. The Bible also says in 1 John 4:18 that “there is no fear in love. But perfect love cast out fear.” So why do we still have so much fear in our lives? Fear of the unknown..fear of not being loved? Primarily because we refuse to fully receive that love. Let me share a personal story to help illustrate this.
I grew up a pretty overweight and overlooked girl. This picture below is me at church camp. To say I spent most of my free time eating donuts and snickers would be an understatement. 🙂 I still remember going to church camp and having all the boys come ask me to ask my friends out for them. At the time I shrugged it off but deep down it hurt. Even though we were young and now I am thankful I didn’t receive that kind of attention I felt rejected and unloved.
Fast forward a few years and I found myself a high school girl who accidentally dropped a lot of weight. I went from being very overweight and unnoticed to one of the most noticed girls in the school. Finally I knew what it was to be truly loved(or so I thought). I have experienced both extremes of being completely overlooked to receiving too much unhealthy attention. I can tell you that both are dangerous places to be if you don’t know the love that comes only from The Lord.
I met my husband, Matt, in college and we got married while we were both still in school. Because I had such misconceptions about what love truly was I brought all kinds of baggage into our marriage. But thankfully The Lord did a mighty work in me and as I grew closer to God I didn’t need the attention from my husband like I thought I did. I became comfortable in my own shell, if you will. Now when I start to notice myself wanting attention from outside sources other than The Lord, I stop and disconnect from everyone and everything(yes this includes Facebook) and connect to my first and only true love. While my husband and I do love each other with everything we’ve got nothing will ever compare to the love I can receive only from my father.
What thing or person have you turned to in order to feel loved? Ask God to show you then commit to connecting to him before you do anything else. The amount of confidence that comes when we are connected to our maker is unlike anything you could ever imagine.
P.S. Look at my adorable turtle my girls got me. Ellie said I should name him Timothy which of course I love because of this 2 Timothy scripture! 🙂
Loving this series. My favorite part was "the amount of confidence that comes when we are connected to our maker is unlike anything you could ever imagine." Recording that in my journal to come back to.
I too am loving this series and once again, this post spoke to me. I found myself an unexpected mid-life orphan at the age 31 at which time I grew angry with God and turned to food for comfort. Well, many pounds later I can tell you or anyone that food is not the answer. HE is. Perhaps I'll find the courage to write about my journey and ongoing struggles on my blog in the near future. It's just so frightening to put it all out there.
I would love to hear your story Cheryl! I know it is hard to be vulnerable so I try to remind myself that if it helps someone else than it was so worth it. I have much more to share on my eating disorders over the years and how God has brought freedom to that area of my life…just waiting on him to download a way to blog about it:)
So glad it is speaking to you Amber! 🙂