The Unconditional Love of Jesus
The Life-Changing Experience of Unconditional Love
I haven’t written about the spiritual part of my healing journey in a while, and I would like to get back to doing that because it is an integral part of the healing journey. The healing journey is not just about healing memories, relationships, your nervous system, or your career; it is also about healing your relationship with your Creator.
I have found this part of the healing journey to be the most challenging. There is something unnerving and powerful about coming before a righteous and holy God when you feel dirty, broken, unloved, and laying all that at His feet. When you kneel before Him with your chin on your chest because of deep shame over what happened to you and feel the warmth and acceptance of His love, it is a life-changing experience.
Performance-Based Love
I want to be very careful when discussing this part of my life because my mom is still living, and I love her dearly. I recognize that as parents, we all do the very best we can, but it is dependent on what we learned from our parents. That is the generational nature of trauma.
I grew up with a narcissistic father who taught me about conditional love. He was kindly affectionate towards me as long as I did what he wanted and did them his way. He twisted my natural desire for affection and connection into a desire for sex. Desiring love and affection came with the trade-off of sex…they were paired.
As a teenager, I remember relating to the song, “I wanna know what love is.” I didn’t want to believe that sex equaled love, but that is what was demonstrated to me. I grew up believing that if I loved a boy, I had to surrender my body to them and give them sex. This is hard to admit, but it is truthful. I was no better than the woman at the well in Jesus’ day. I am not proud of that. I’ve had to work through a lot of shame related to that, and the Lord has forgiven me.
The Unconditional Love of God
As a teenager, I struggled greatly with my relationship with the Lord because of the sexual abuse I was enduring. I erroneously believed that God only loved me when I walked the Christian life perfectly. How could I do that with what was happening to me?
One day, I came across a portion of scripture (Romans 8:35–39) that challenged my belief about love. It says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I read that passage of scripture over and over again because it just didn’t compute. I remember writing in my journal to God saying, “Lord, does this mean that it doesn’t matter what I do, don’t do, or even things being done to me…that you ALWAYS love me?” Yes, that’s what it means.
Then I started reading verses like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” And Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 1 John 4:8 says, “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
God’s love is not conditional because He is love. His love does not depend on me because it is part of His character. It is who He is. There is nothing I can do to change that. There is nothing I can do to deserve it. There is nothing I can do to lose it. He is going to love me no matter what.
And here is the amazing part…it’s not just me; it’s the whole world, including you. Even when we feel unloved or unloveable, God still loves us. Even when we are angry at Him for allowing us to experience abuse and trauma, that does not change the fact that He loves us.
Folks, if we can only wrap our heads around this one concept, it will change us. It changed me. I am ALWAYS loved. I am accepted in the beloved. I belong to Him.
God loves you, and you can do nothing to change that.
The Struggle to Accept God’s Unconditional Love
I don’t want you to get the idea that all I had to do was read those verses repeatedly to understand that God’s unconditional love was for me because that is not how it worked. While I believed God’s Word was true, that was not what my earthly father modeled for me. Whenever I “messed up” in my walk with the Lord, I would ask Him if He still loved me. Whenever I was angry with Him because He allowed me to be abused, I would ask Him if He still loved me. Over and over again, I asked him, and the answer was ALWAYS the same. God’s Word never changed. God never changed. Amid the chaos, nothing is more comforting than having someone who is consistent and never changes. I had to come to the point where I would either take God at His Word or continue questioning Him. I chose to trust Him, and His unconditional love for me was cemented in my heart.
An Invitation
If you are struggling to receive God’s unconditional love for you, you are not alone. If you would like to learn more about God’s love for you, I would consider it an honor and privilege to share how you can experience it for yourself. Please reach out to me at www.cyndibennettconsulting.com
