This week we are talking about why we need love and what we do with it. I don’t know about you but I can have a hard time admitting that I need something. I am a 1 on the enneagram which means I am a perfectionist by nature and a perfectionist in “not asking for help.” I tend to spread myself so thin while making it seem like everything is ok. I can still struggle with asking for help even on days that receiving help would be most beneficial.
The truth is we were all created with a God sized hole in our heart. This means that no matter how many times we want to pretend that we have it all together there is still something missing and this hole looks a lot like God’s love. As people in a fallen world need love. Today we are going to unpack the two questions, why do we need love and what do we do with it? Last week we talked about how 1 John 4:16 shares that “God is love.” We know that if we need God and he is love then we need love too. We are incomplete without God which means that we are incomplete without his love.
Some of us have a God shaped hole in our hearts and we have been seeking to fill it with a bunch of things. We have been seeking to fill it with relationships, attention, friends, popularity, approval, being someone we aren’t, and/or social media. You’ve been trying to fill an empty space with something that will never fit and you’re frustrated because you are out of the energy to keep striving. You are overwhelmed because you feel like you’ve tried everything but then at the end of the day you’re left wondering why your heart is still empty.
We can wonder why life still hurts, why you’re still sad, or why you still don’t feel seen. There is only one thing that perfectly fits the holes in our hearts, it is God’s love and that is why we need it. We know that we can search the world but nothing fits quite like his love. When that hole is filled with God’s love it is no longer a space to be filled. The space becomes a place that you live from, an overflow of his love.
Lamentations 3:31 says “No one is cast off by the Lord forever, though he brings grief he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” We need his love for days like that, days that are sorrowful, days that are gloomy, days that don’t make sense. Your hole is not too big, for no one is cast off by the Lord forever because great is his unfailing love. It can be really easy to blame the holes in our hearts on God’s absence when all he is waiting for is an invitation.
What do we do with his love? We receive it. I love to share the story of when I first moved in with my parents at 16 years old. I was broken and worn out on building a relationship with another “parent.” I knew that there was no way that these people could prove to be any different than the ones before. The quote I repeated to them was that “my friends are better family than yall will ever be because they are the ones that have stuck around the longest.” Talk about living with a hole in your heart.
Month after month of rejecting their love it still seemed to be waiting for me on the other side of the walls I had put up. What a resemblance of God’s love for us. I remember the day I could physically feel God soften my heart to receive love again. It’s the kind of receiving that realizes the depth of his heart for you, taking him at his word, believing in his love for you. It was a moment that I finally felt a broken piece of my heart be put back together. God is waiting to do that with yours.
Revelation 3:20 says “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” One thing I have learned about God is that he is a gentleman and he will never force himself through the doors of your heart, he patiently waits for our faith to open it. When we open the door it is the moment we get to receive his love. When we open the door it is the moment the hole becomes full and your heart becomes healed.
Whatever hole you are trying to fill today, whether it’s the hole of singleness, the hole of sadness, the hole of pride, or a hole that needs surrender, may you hear the knock of the Lord on the door of your heart and receive his love today.
If you don’t know how to practically receive God’s love then join us the rest of the month as we continue to read his word together. Use these blogs as a guide to know God deeper and experience the fullness of life!
Xoxo Scarlet