I Love You More Than I Need You

I’ve been reading this book called When People are Big and God is Small (I highly recommend) and one of the really profound things that it’s helped me realize is that it’s very possible for me to need you so much that I forget how to love you well. We can desire and appreciate being treated in a certain way but, we must be careful with needing someone to be something to us or fill some need in us that only God was designed to fill. You're entitled to determine your desires, but only God is willing and able to meet all your needs. He’s the only one we can trust with that kind of power because he is perfectly good and perfectly knowing. When we give others too much power to fulfill our needs, we give them the power to destroy us. Only God can be trusted with that kind of power. I think that’s why romantic love  especially can be so risky and so scary, that’s a lot of power to give someone over your emotions. I know we canceled Jada Pinkett Smith or whatever but I’m still gonna quote something she said because it was good, I don’t care lol. she talked about getting to a point where she had to stop relying on Will for her happiness. She had to figure out what she needed to be happy on her own before she could be happy with Him. Of course I’m gonna put the Jesus spin on this and say more that just figuring out how to make ourselves happy independent of other people. I think the key is to learn how to be whole in Christ. I really believe that when we place the burden of our needs on God he will show us how to love ourselves and others from a place of abundance, not one of deficiency. Perfect love casts out all fear. We aren’t able to love each other perfectly because we are imperfect beings. But, God is able to love us perfectly and we have the opportunity to receive that love. When we have this perspective God will place us in relationships where we can love from a place of wholeness and overflow, If God is my divine matchmaker, then what in the world would we have to be afraid of? If God put this person (romantically or not)  in my life then I have a greater ability to trust and love them well since the person I’m really trusting is God. I don’t NEED them to love me perfectly because God already took care of that. Therefore, I am able to love them more freely, more selflessly because I don’t have to focus so much on how they’re loving me back.

We all like to use this analogy of surrounding ourselves with people that can pour into us and it does have its merits. But, if I claim the identity of an unfilled cup, then everyone around me automatically becomes a pitcher designed to pour out and meet my needs. We don’t do this intentionally but, if we don’t consciously try to stop it, we naturally look to others to fill us up. We frame our desires as our needs. Then we become dependent on another man, friend, parent, drug, experience to fill that need. However when we do this, disappointment becomes a perpetual state of existence rather than a momentary experience because we are constantly placing expectations on people that they never signed up for and were never designed for. I think that's why the bible talks about living water. People are great and we do need to be in relationship but, perhaps the reason I’m still so thirsty for love and affection and companionship is that I keep drinking from this man, or this friend, or this parent with the hopes that they’ll fill me up but they’re still dealing with their own leaks so they can’t possibly quench my thirst. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we have to be perfectly filled up with Jesus in order to love on others. Sanctification is a lifelong process but we are literally called to love one another daily so how does that work? Well I think it's simply a source issue. While we are supposed to love on others, we can’t look to the people we are called to love, as the source of the love we’re supposed to give back to them. Does that make sense? Imagine you have two cups that are half full. Cup A is poured into Cup B. Then cup B is poured back into cup A over and over again. Well first of all ya’ll are both drinking some dingy overused water. But what you can’t see is both of your cups have holes in them so at some point you’ll be looking at each other with nothing to give. Pastor Mike Todd gives the illustration of God giving us a new heart as him giving us a new cup but I want to push back against that a bit for the sake of my analogy, I think that more than God taking away our leaky cup in an instant, he does it over time. (it's kind of like the idea that we have been saved, we are being saved and we will be saved) He didn’t just create a new heart in us, he is CREATING a new heart in us. And this heart (cup) was not designed to be primarily filled with love from someone else's cup. It was custom made to be a receptacle of living water from the Lord. Therefore, although we may not be completely full, at least we can trust that our holes are being patched up. At least I’m in a place where I don't need you to love me well in order to be able to love you well. I just need God to love me well. (that's the only way he knows how)

Because I’m being filled by an endless source, I am able to pour into you even though I’m not all the way healed yet. The primary purpose of the people in our lives is not to fill us up, our primary purpose is not to fill them up either. We need to be made whole and filled up in Jesus Christ and THEN we can pour into others out of our overflow. I was in a position where  I loved Jesus but I still felt like I needed others. I was saved but I’m still lonely. But, perhaps it is because I’m compartmentalizing God. I allowed him to fill me up spiritually, and mentally, but relationally? nah. and emotionally? No ma’am. At the end of the day it's a belief issue. Do I believe Jesus can REALLY be everything he says he’s going to be to me or am I still looking to others to top me off in some places that I don’t trust God to handle. Once again I’m not saying we don’t need to be loved on and cared for by others. I think that is a God given desire. I’m just saying if we go looking to fill that desire outside of the context of God and the relationships he endorses, and the people in our life will leave disappointed and thirsty every time. If we try to get full off of people above God, we begin to need them so much that we’re incapable of loving them well. When God puts people in our lives, he does it with the understanding that the real solution to our emptiness will not just come from being served, it will develop out of service to others. God is so God that he knows that contrary to popular belief, when we give love, we experience a kind of love that does not easily fade away. How can we give out what we ourselves need? By filling up on the one who has an abundance of it. The living water that will never ever run dry. He's the one can love us perfectly because he doesn’t need us for anything. The one who is able to meet all our needs in every area of our life where we feel something is missing. Once we see him as more than enough, we will realize that he’s not only able to make us FEEL better. He actually makes us better, in his timing, with the relationships and opportunities, and experiences that will not just momentarily be good to us, but that will eternally be good FOR us. So my goal is to love people more than I need them by needing God as much as I love him.