Love Without Fear

I was having a discussion not long ago with a friend. She was telling me that we shouldn’t love guys more than they love us. She said that the key is to be the one loved more than the one loving. She said that it isn’t safe to love more than the other person. She said that if you love someone else completely, with all your heart, you’ll get hurt.
I completely disagree with my friend.
Love cannot be based on fear, or else it is not really love. Perhaps it is survival instead.
I believe that true love is about loving with all, without being conditionally dependent on the other persons love for you.
I see that in Jesus. He loved, even though it cost him every and wasn’t appreciated.
But I struggle with then. Because my own love is conditional.
Lately, my love has been put to the test. In a few of my relationships, I have had to come to a place of love-by-choice, not love-by-feeling. In the past two especially, I have been put in situations where love would be close to my last natural response.
And yet, as I am facing these people and circumstances, the Spirit within me gently says, ‘love’.
As I approach the coming Discipleship Training School that I am staffing, when I spend time praying, the word that keeps coming to me is:


Will I allow myself to go into someone else’s pain? Will I respond with love towards unlovable people? Will I look through God’s eyes, or through my own?


I believe that true love costs everything. If love is cheap, then maybe it is not love at all?
But should I fear love? If it will cost me everything I have, is it something to be feared?
In the book of first John, Paul says that ‘God IS love’. God is to be honoured and revered, yes. But he is not to be afraid of. He is terrifying. And abounding in steadfast love.
I do not want to live my life being afraid of loving too much. I don’t want to pour out my love in measurements; exactingly.
I want to live my life throwing love from me out of the abundance of love that God continually showers on me


1 John 4:18 - 19
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.