To Be Loved

There’s nothing quite like going on a Women’s Ministry weekend retreat with about 90 ladies from your church. It’s refreshing. It’s uplifting. It’s fun. It’s full of laughter. And having just arrived home this afternoon from this particular retreat, tonight I’ve been dwelling on how extremely encouraging it was for me.

Now this post isn’t all about that retreat, but something that occurred on that retreat was the inspiration for this post. So just store that in your brain — I’ll come back to it later.

Everyone wants to be loved. I really think that’s true. Deep down we’re wired to desire to be loved by someone. Whether it’s a romantic love, or a friendship love, or a familial love, we desire love.

What I have always had a hard time grasping was the concept of love that never fails, never ceases, never wavers, never dies, and never gives up. It’s hard for me to grasp because it’s something that I’ve never really experienced or seen in a relationship between two people.

I have people in my life that I love — family members, friends. And there’s not a single person that I love that hasn’t ever disappointed me, or fallen short, or failed me in some way during our relationship. I’m not saying that to insult the ones I love. I’m just saying that they aren’t perfect. And neither am I — there’s not a single person I love who hasn’t been disappointed by me in some way, or who I haven’t failed in some way, or who I’ve been perfect to. Human-to-human love is imperfect, and at the very least it wavers. Sometimes it gives up. Sometimes it dies.

So as I said, the concept of unceasing, unfailing, undying, unwavering love is something that is hard for me to grasp. But may I add one more adjective to that list?

Above all of those things, I’ve had the hardest time grasping the concept of unconditional love.

If you’ve followed this blog at all or have taken the time to read some of my previous posts, you might remember one that I wrote back in June of this year titled When I’m Not Enough. It’s the most recent piece of my personal testimony, and coincidentally, a post that I had the privilege of sharing with the women at the retreat I was on this weekend.

In this post, I wrote about a time when I willingly chose to live in bondage to a sin and separate myself from God — and how, about a year ago, I finally gave this sin over to God and accepted freedom from it in Him. That moment I refer to in that post was a “turning point” and was absolutely pivotal in my faith-walk with Christ. But what I haven’t shared is how He’s been working in my life since then.

I briefly mentioned in “When I’m Not Enough” that my life hasn’t been perfect since that fateful day one year ago — that I’ve slipped up. Well, slipped up has more meaning behind it than what I may have let on. When I wrote that, I didn’t just mean that I’ve made other mistakes.

No, I’ve made the same mistake. In the time that has passed since that day in October of last year — and even since I wrote that personal testimony back in June — I have committed that same sin.

And you know, it’s very hard for me to admit that. Because I don’t want to admit that I’ve made the same mistake that I claim to have been set free from. So you can just imagine how it’s also threatened to eat away at my self-perception and faith once again.

And at one point during this ongoing struggle, I came to question whether or not I even had the right to say that I had been set free from this sin. If I was still struggling with it, if I was still losing battles, had I really been set free at all? You see, my mental image of being “set free” has always been this magical experience of giving a sin over to God and never ever struggling with it or committing it again. It was gone. It was finished. It was dead. Vanquished! And I would never do it again because all of a sudden I was immune to the temptation.

I have since come to realize that my idea of “freedom from sin” needed a little bit of work.

Sometimes being freed from a sin includes never committing it again. It happens often to many people, and it’s beautiful. But sometimes freedom is more of a journey. Sometimes being set free from a sin looks more like a commitment to fight — to fight it forever, and sometimes lose. But to never give in and never give up again. And eventually, to stop losing.

So when the Enemy started planting thoughts like this in my head — “You’re not allowed to claim to be free! Nothing has changed. You’re still weak. You’re still a failure. You’re still a slave to sin.” — I knew this time around that I had to fight back. With Truth.

This time around, I brought it to God. I didn’t try to hide it from Him or ignore Him or pretend that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I humbly brought it to Him and dropped the whole mess at His feet all over again. And he promptly showered me with grace and forgiveness.

And when I did it again, he forgave me again. And again. And when I thought that surely this time he would be done forgiving me — that He was going to give up on me because I was giving up on me — he wasn’t. He didn’t. He forgave me. His Spirit stayed with me. And he continued to love me.

I hadn’t frustrated God into giving up on me. I hadn’t used up all my “grace cards.” His love is unconditional — it is without limit, unreserved, unrestricted, unmitigated, absolute.

There’s a lyric in the Casting Crowns song “East to West” that goes, “But today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from you leaving me this way.”

God will never leave me that way. He will never give up on me. He will never ignore my cry for help and forgiveness. He will never be done with me. And He will never EVER stop loving me. His love is unconditional. There’s nothing I can do about it.

Not once in that mess did God say to me, “That’s it! You’re un-fixable. I’m done. You’re on your own.”

No, no. Instead, I heard over and over again, “That’s not who you are, Brianna. Remember who you are in me? You’re no longer a slave to this. You can make a different choice. I forgive you. Keep fighting. Just ask me, and I’ll remind you who you are.”

And once again, this weekend at that women’s retreat, He reminded me who I am. It was very fitting that the theme of the retreat was “Identity in Christ.” Because it spoke directly to my current situation in a way that I didn’t expect it would.

Earlier this morning, during our final session of the retreat, we were each given a gift. We got to choose a box from up front with a beautiful necklace inside of it — and while I love the necklace I got and will wear it often, that wasn’t the real gift. The real gift was the little piece of paper inside that had a word on it. There were many different words in the different boxes, and we didn’t know what ours would be when we chose our box.

But we were encouraged to accept the word we got as a word from God. A reminder — one that perhaps we needed — of who we are in Christ. And what was my word? You guessed it.

Loved.

I didn’t expect that simple word to hit me like it did in the moment I opened that box. But it hit hard. I have been struggling to accept the fact that God can still love me. That He has never given up on me and that He won’t ever give up on me.

I am unconditionally loved.

Right now and for quite a while now, I’ve been in a place of strength and contentment and truth — and yes, freedom. I’ve been learning how to fight back with Truth, and I’m getting good at it. Will I ever lose again? I don’t know. I hope not — I’m gonna fight like crazy not to. But it’s possible that I might.

But if I do, it will not defeat me. I will not give in. Because I am a free woman.

I will give it to God, and I will stand back up in His grace and forgiveness and love, and I will fight again.

And I will stop losing the battles. Because God has won the war.

His unconditional love will always be undefeated.