Let Others Love You
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1
For the last few weeks, over and over again, one specific phrase keeps popping in my mind:
Let others love you.
This really didn’t make sense the first couple times I heard it. But Jesus, I do let others love me. What are you talking about? And still the phrase kept coming, whispering to my heart in quiet moments of my day. Let. Others. Love. You.
And I think I get it now.
I’m a pretty “lovey” person. I love a lot of people. I love a lot of things. But do I really love myself? Do I really believe I am valuable enough to be loved?
When I was in middle school, I bought into the lie that for guys to tell you you were pretty, you first had to remind them how pretty you weren’t. I bought into the lie that tearing yourself down was a successful tool to get others to love you. And somewhere along the way I started believing the things I was declaring over myself were more true than what my friends were saying to encourage me.
I see now that was a terrible mistake. Praise Jesus that those so call “truths” I believed for so long aren’t the same truths I align myself with today. And while I know we all come to terms a little more with who we are after we escape the perils of middle and high school, Jesus deserves all the credit for redeeming my life, for redeeming me. He’s so good to teach us the truth about how He sees us and who we are in Him.
Because here’s the truth: You are worthy of being loved.
And it doesn’t matter if you think you have your life together or everything around you is falling apart. In every season of life, in sin and success, you are worthy of being loved.
So let’s be people who love people really well, but let’s also joyfully accept the love others (and God) try to give us. Let’s look to Jesus for the truth of who we are and let Him speak to us through the kind and true words of others. Let’s boldly accept the love we do deserve. Because, even in the midst of our unbearable humanness, we are WORTHY of love. No matter who you are and what you’ve done, Jesus came to die because he loved you. He saw your messiness, He saw your sin, He saw every failure and short coming and guess what? He died anyway. Because He. Loves. YOU.