Seven
Steps to Finding True Love
There
is probably no topic which has captivated people throughout the centuries
and from most every culture than the topic of
love. We put a man on the moon, broke the speed
of sound, and mapped the human genome, but love remains a complete mystery.
Science has not been able to explain it. Mathematics cannot predict it. Poets
still wrestle with adequate words to describe it.
1. Love
Requires You To Reveal Your True Self To One Another
To love at all is to
be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one.”
Lewis is right. What makes love so hard, and sometimes painful, is the vulnerability
that always seems to accompany it.
“True love goes beyond
the passion of romance and even finding a partner for the sake of being
married.”
We use the word love
to describe a lot of things. We love food. We love music. We love a good joke
and we love having a good time. Using love to describe such simple things makes
the word seem a little safer. It is safe because we are not exposed. A great
cup of coffee cannot reject us. A song from our favorite band does not leave us
feeling useless. But when we choose to share our life with another person, we
inevitably make a choice to become vulnerable. Unfortunately, vulnerability
leaves our defenses down and often we get hurt.
We all know the
feeling: rejection, humiliation, desperation. Opening our heart to another
person, only to be rejected, is one of the most painful experiences in life. It
hurts the most because in love we are most vulnerable. It’s worse than physical
pain because it shakes us at the core of our identity, our hopes, and our
dreams. Love rushes us to the mountain-top, and when lost, sends us
careening back to the valley below. We cannot help but feel empty. We
cannot help but feel worthless. We cannot help but feel hopeless.
2. FINDING TRUE LOVE CAN BE
DIFFICULT
The Bible has a
remarkable story about a woman named Leah who discovered that finding true love
was difficult. Leah was the daughter of a wealthy and manipulative man named
Laban. Leah also had a sister named Rachel, one of the most beautiful women in
the whole region. Leah, was described as, “weak in the eyes.” We do not know
exactly what that phrase means, but it is not hard to guess. Even without the
side-by-side comparison to her beautiful sister, Leah was not drawing much
attention.
One day, Rachel was
herding the sheep when a young man named Jacob came to the well. His journey’s
purpose was to find a wife, so it did not take him long to notice beautiful
Rachel approaching. He rolled away the stone over the well, and watered the sheep
for her. Learning he was her father’s nephew, she ran home to tell Laban the
news. Already head-over-heels in love, or call
it love-at-first-sight if you wish, Jacob stayed on with Laban. When
asked what his wages should be, he immediately asked to marry Rachel. Laban
made Jacob an offer. “Work for me, seven years without pay, then I will give
you my daughter.”
“What makes love so
hard, and sometimes painful, is the vulnerability that always seems to
accompany it.”
It is starting to
sound like a romantic story for the ages! Jacob was so madly in love that he
did not hesitate. Seven years he worked, everyday focused on his prize. One day
he would finally be able to marry the woman of his dreams, Rachel. The Bible
records the event with all of the poetry we would expect from a great love
story. “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a
few days because of the love he had for her.”
After seven years of
labor, the wedding day finally arrived. The party must have been
massive. When night came, Jacob and his new bride, probably wearing her wedding
veil, went into their tent.
The next morning Jacob
awoke, the Bible says, “and behold it was Leah!” Jacob had been tricked. Laban
had switched his daughters on the wedding night and tricked Jacob into marrying
his oldest, Leah. Why? Laban wanted another seven years of free labor before he
would allow Jacob to actually marry Rachel. Still madly in love with Rachel,
Jacob agrees and works another seven years to marry this younger daughter.
We like the image of
Jacob! He was willing to submit himself to over a decade of manual labor as an
act of love for Rachel whom he considered to be his soul mate. Like a
great Shakespearean tragedy, we want desperately to find
that kind of love, too. We want to know that someone would make such a
sacrifice for us. This expression of love is the deepest craving of our heart.
But allowing ourselves to be quickly carried off in the ecstasy of the moment
misses the real heart of the story for Leah.
Leah had never been able
to draw much attention. She had always been the hopeless romantic. But now
things were much worse. Leah was married to a man who never for a moment loved
her, and manipulated by a father as payment for help around the farm. Leah was
not loved by her husband, nor even her father. She was used and discarded. When
she was most vulnerable she was rejected.
“Each of us wants to
find a way to open up our hearts and lives and know that in that moment of
honesty we will be accepted and not rejected.”
What happened next is
subtle, but important for us to understand our own struggle with love and
rejection. In Leah’s first century world, women cared deeply about building a
family, especially having sons, to which they could pass on their family name.
A father’s proudest moment was the birth of his first son. Soon after being
married, Jacob wanted a son. Leah saw an opportunity! If she could be
the first to give Jacob a son, surely then he would love and appreciate her.
Leah must have been excited to find out she was pregnant, and even more excited
when she gave birth to the family’s first son, Reuben.
Leah believed in her
heart that God had blessed her with this son so that now her husband would
finally love her. But nothing changed. Leah gave birth to a second son, she
named him Simon.
Again she believed God
had seen her rejection. Now, surely her husband would love her. But nothing
changed. Leah had a third son, who she named Levi. She honestly hoped that now
her husband would care for her and love her. But again, nothing
changed.
3.
OUR NEED FOR TRUE LOVE REVEALS YOUR NEED TO BE LOVED UNCONDITIONALLY
Leah’s life was
controlled by the hope that she could somehow make herself lovable. She was
desperate to find a way to earn her husband’s attention. Her broken heart and
desperation to be loved teaches us a deeply personal truth about our own search
for true love. We inevitably all feel the crushing weight of trying to earn it.
Marketers sell us the
idea that if we were just a little bit more attractive, a little thinner, and a
little better dressed, then someone would finally take notice and we would feel
loved. But we do not. Culture pressures us to set aside our prudish reluctance
and instead give-away our bodies; it promises us intimacy leads to love. But it
does not.
“Honestly, true love
has never really been about romance or passion at all. It is about truth and
value. It is about vulnerability and acceptance.”
The harder we try, the
more desperate we become to find the magic potion. We believe that with the
poison-tipped arrow of Cupid in our hand, we need only hit our target and watch
as love and intimacy explodes into a vibrant life of confidence,
fulfillment, and passion. But, that is not real life. So, we end up settling
for watching it play out in movies and dreaming about it in novels. Our own
experience feels more like crawling our way through the dunes of the Sahara
Desert, desperate to find an oasis with water. Just when we think we have
finally found true love, we are crushed with the reality that it was just a
mirage and we have nothing to show for it.
Leah helps us realize
that most of what we call love and our search for it, is really a desperate
expedition for evidence that we are valuable enough to be loved in the first
place. We want to feel like our life is worth something to someone. We are
desperate to be known, not just as a body, but as a soul. We want to be
vulnerable and in that vulnerability to be accepted. We want to be loved
unconditionally.
This is where we find
the great struggle of looking for true love. As one author puts it, “To be
loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is
our greatest fear.” Each of us wants to find a way to open up our hearts and
lives and know that in that moment of honesty we will be accepted and not
rejected.
We all know the risks,
so we tend toward pretending. Too nervous to share the truth, we morph into
whatever seems most desirable. But that is empty. We know it and we just do not
know what else to do. We feel like we have to keep the show going. After all,
what is the alternative? If we open up with the whole truth, we face the risk
of being ridiculed, rejected and thrown away.
Honestly, true love
has never really been about romance or passion at all. It is about truth and
value. It is about vulnerability and acceptance. It is about wholeness and
finding peace. It is about discovering a foundation on which we can build our
lives and on which we can place our hope and confidence. It is about feeling
like we are worth something. It is about sharing vulnerability and in the midst
of it, feeling loved unconditionally.
5. THERE IS ONLY ONE SOURCE OF TRUE
LOVE
6. ACCEPTING JESUS’ LOVE OPENS THE DOOR
TO A NEW LIFE
7. YOUR SEARCH FOR TRUE LOVE BEGINS WITH THIS SIMPLE
PRAYER
4. TRUE LOVE IS
COMPLICATED BY OUR SELF-INTEREST
Let
me tell you a secret that you probably know already but are not willing to
admit. Unconditional love, the kind that pours meaning and significance into
your life, is hard to find in another human being because we are all too
self-interested and too self-motivated. Our hearts are bent toward protecting
and promoting ourselves. It is not hard to see! We live in a culture that
constantly measures every relationship by what we get out of it. We stay
married only as long as it is benefiting us. We commit to a relationship only
until something better comes along. The success of our relationships is
measured by our need for love being met, instead of seeking to meet the need
for true love in others.
The
Bible speaks clearly to this fact. It calls our bent toward self-interest sin,
and it was neither the way humanity, nor the world was created originally. Adam
and Eve were the first to experience love and it was much deeper than what we
call love today. Adam and Eve’s relationship was perfectly woven together with
one another, with God, and with the enjoyment of creation around them. There
was no self-interest. Instead, their whole lives were shaped by caring for each
other, caring for the world around them, and thanking God for the experience.
Neither Adam nor Eve ever felt a moment of fear, rejection, or failure.
“You will never find or experience the true
love you are looking for in this world alone.”
If
you are familiar with the Bible’s story of the first sin, you will remember it
involved a simple proposition. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from one tree
in the Garden of Eden. As Eve passed by, a serpent whispered a temptation.
“Eve, if you eat of this fruit you will be like God.” It is strange that the
serpent did not tempt Eve with how delicious the fruit looked. The real
temptation had nothing to do with appearance. Instead, the Serpent did
something more subversive. He offered Eve a thought about herself. Eve asked
herself a question she had never wondered before, “What’s in it for me?”
This
moment of self-discovery came with massive consequences. Eve ate the fruit and
passed it on to her husband who ate it as well. This act of disobeying God led
Adam and Eve to the startling realization they had been naked this whole time.
It is as if they had been so enjoying one another, and the world around them so
much, that they never thought to look down at themselves. For the first time
they felt vulnerable and ashamed. They made clothes to cover and protect
themselves.
God
discussed their disobedience with them, because He knew that all of their
relationships were falling apart as a result of their self-interest. Eve blamed
the serpent for tempting her. Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit and then
even went so far as to blame God for giving him Eve in the first place! Neither
one wanted to take the blame but was concerned only for their self-interest. It
is starting to look more like the world with which we are familiar!
The
consequences for disobeying God were the loss of relationships. Adam and Eve
would never be allowed back into the perfect garden world. They lost
everything. We know their new world of self-interest and self-protection,
because we carry with us the same sin-bent reality. We long for real love,
because we were created to love and be loved unconditionally. This is probably
the most important point in this entire article. You will never find or
experience the true love you are looking for in this world alone. Each of us
and the world around us is too soaked in sin. The great news is that there is one
who is the very definition of Love and you can be in relationship with Him!
5. THERE IS ONLY ONE SOURCE OF TRUE
LOVE
Let
us return to Leah’s story for a moment. Leah was caught up in the struggle to
earn her husband’s love. Three sons later, she was still clinging to the hope
that one day he would wake up and start to appreciate her. She kept waiting and
waiting. Eventually, Leah gave birth to another son, her fourth. Leah named him
Judah and announced, “Now I will praise God.” Judah’s name means something
special. It means to praise, or be thankful to God. But, how could she praise
God when her outward circumstances had not changed? Jacob did not rush home
with a bouquet of roses and an apology card. Leah was no more loved now than
she had ever been. But somehow, she was now worshiping and thanking God.
With
the birth of her fourth son, Leah had a life altering realization. She realized
that while her husband refused to love her, God was present in her life! God
had noticed every pain, every sorrow, every moment of rejection she had ever
experienced and he was pouring blessing into her life. God loved her
unconditionally!
You
need to realize something important, as well. You may feel completely neglected
and empty, but God is paying attention to you. You would not be reading this if
that was not true. Right now, the God of the whole universe is trying to show
you, there is a greater love and acceptance being offered to you, than you ever
thought existed. That love is God’s love. He loves you unconditionally.
Leah
did not realize it at the time, but Leah, and her son Judah, were ancestors of
a man named Jesus. This is the Jesus, whom Christians worship and who the
entire Bible anticipated. It is a fitting end to the story, because no one
would ever offer greater hope and love than Jesus. He would offer exactly what
Leah was trying desperately to find.
The
Bible tells that Jesus was not merely a man, but the son of God Himself, who
came to earth.
“Jesus
knows better than anyone who you are; the good and the bad. He knows,
because He took your place. He has already paid the price for your sins, and He
did it before you ever paid a moment of attention to Him.”
He
did so because God was not content to leave us in hopeless despair and
rejection, stumbling our way through life trying to manufacture the love that
had been lost all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Even though our own
selfish hearts had blinded us from God’s love, God was determined to lead us
back to it.
Jesus
knew all too well this pain of rejection. He was rejected at times by His best
friends, His own family, and in the end, by the world around him. Jesus lived a
perfect life, never out of self-interest but always doing the will of the God
the Father, and offering Himself to serve and help those around Him. But no one
recognized what He was doing.
They
saw it as weakness and sentenced Jesus to death, and crucified Him. Jesus
satisfied God’s justice, but was not rejected by God–or there would have been
no resurrection!
Our
rebellion and self-preference is disobedience to God, and that keeps us for a
relationship with Him. We are not interested in His plan, we
want our dreams to come true. So we reject Him and chart our own
course. We ignore His instructions and believe whatever feels right to us. We
turn down His love and try to replace it with romance and passion because it
makes us feel good temporarily. This is the most remarkable part of the Gospel.
God did not wait for us to call out to Him for help or love.
He
blessed Leah even when she was caught up in trying to earn love for herself.
God does not wait for you either. He chose to act on your behalf while you were
still lost in your sinful and selfish ambitions. God took all of the
punishment, that your disinterest and rebellion deserved, and He poured it out
on Jesus, His only son. Jesus stepped into your place and accepted the
punishment, because He loves you.
The
real struggle for love, is our desire to be fully known, and yet fully
accepted. When you hear the phase, “Jesus loves you,” this is not a Christian
cliché, but rather the truth of unconditional love. Jesus knows better
than anyone who you are; the good and the bad. He knows every secret, every
pain, every sin, and every wrong. He knows you better than you know yourself.
He knows, because He took your place. He has already paid the price for your
sins, and He did it before you ever paid a moment of attention to Him.
Do
you realize what that means? In Jesus, you are fully known and still fully
accepted. Jesus is under no allusions. He knows exactly who you are. His love
is not something you earned or deserved, yet here He is offering it to you. No
one knows you better, and no one could possibly love you more. He gave his life
for you. And now, He is willing to take the journey with you, from where you
are, to where you need to be in Him; so that you can experience true love.
6. ACCEPTING JESUS’ LOVE OPENS THE DOOR
TO A NEW LIFE
The
good news of what Jesus has done for you is not just salvation from a coming
apocalyptic destruction but accepting Jesus’ love, will begin to transform and
fill your life with purpose, strength, and value. Like Leah, you will be amazed
at the realization that you have discovered true love! You can thrive in the
amazing joy of worshipping Him with a thankful and pure heart regardless of
what is going on around you.
Your
value and your identity is secured for all eternity with Jesus, who loves you
so passionately that He gave His own life. When you understand that truth, it
transforms the way you think about love. No longer is love solely a romantic
relationship that meets your desperate need to find significance and value. You
are able to approach every new relationship, already possessing a full grasp of
your significance. Living in God’s love and following Him places you in a
position of strength for you know, to whom you belong and who you are. You do
not need love to prove your self-worth or value. God is yours and you are His.
“Your
value and your identity is secured for all eternity with Jesus, who loves you
so passionately that He gave His own life.”
Understanding
God’s love fills you with the stability and confidence to face any
rejection or loss, and to know, no matter how much it hurts, your identity and
value can never be shaken. You are secure in God! Without the need to use
another’s love, to salvage your self-worth, you can finally start to enjoy and
appreciate all of the people and experiences that surround you every day. You
can enjoy your life and your relationships the way God that intended.
Learning
to live and grow in the love of God can be a process, as you throw off the old
nature and ways of thinking, and put on God’s love and right way of living. The
world around us is constantly trying to challenge you, and to pull you back.
But, every single day, Jesus continues to express His love as an alternative.
All that is left is for you to make a choice.
Are
you ready to make a life-changing decision to follow true love and to be loved
unconditionally? God is the source of our value and our hope. Nothing you face
in this life will shake loose the love of God.
“With
God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put
everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to
the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and
freely do for us? . . . Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a
wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not
hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not
backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. . . . None of this
fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing
living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable
or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of
the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us,” (Romans 8:31-32, 35, 37-39, The
Message).
7. YOUR SEARCH FOR TRUE LOVE BEGINS WITH THIS SIMPLE
PRAYER
Your
journey for true love and to be loved unconditionally begins with a simple
prayer. Would you read and believe this prayer with me?
“God,
right now I’m experiencing deep hurt and rejection. I realize that I have spent
much of my life trying to find love and value in the wrong places. I don’t want
to go on living like this. Forgive me for trying to find my own way. Forgive me
for neglecting You. I thank you that even before I was aware of it, You were
demonstrating Your love for me in Jesus’ death. I thank You that His death
offers me a way to know You and to experience Your love. God, fill my heart
with a sense of your love. Help me to realize that you are the source of my
worth and value. I trust you with my life and my broken heart. Heal it. Help me
to turn to you, and worship you. Amen.”
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