When Your Relationship Doesn’t Work Out

 

1John 4:18(NLT)
“Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

"How do we get the most out of love that we possibly can without getting hurt?"

Finding the kind of love that we want for ourselves is a very important part of our lives, and most of us want to control it. We want to be in a relationship with a person that has the capacity to love us in a certain way, and we also have expectations about other attributes they might have, like looks, wealth, and intelligence. Most of us never consider the amount of expectations we place on a relationship before it actually gets off the ground. We also don’t think about the pressure we’re placing on ourselves to ensure the relationship’s success. Only when things go haywire and end up being far from what we expected will we realize that many elements in a relationship simply can’t be controlled. We desperately need to learn this lesson now. Doing so will save us a whole lot of heartbreak in the future. 

Do you know what love is?

We see it in fairy tales and movies, and we read about it in romance novels. It’s the love that rescues the damsel in distress and causes her to be blissfully fulfilled the rest of her life. A true definition of love is never really articulated in those fairy tales and romance novels. It’s depicted as an intense feeling that we can’t do without. The giver of this great love really floats our boats. Like the damsel in distress, we are led to believe that without receiving the love of a gallant, noble, and handsome as heck prince, we’re incomplete. It isn't realistic, but most of us hold on to it without exploring the depth of giving and receiving something lasting and real.

1John 4:18 tells us that describing love as just a feeling or an emotion doesn’t cut it. This verse isn’t referring to those ooey gooey feelings that flutter away in our tummies like butterflies. Those are yummy, there’s no doubt about it, but they are also fleeting. They are feelings of affection and passion that can go as quickly as they came. These feelings are not a strong enough foundation to build a relationship that will last.     

1John 4:8(NLT) says, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”  This is a simple verse, but it carries enough to feed us knowledge and truth for an eternity. God IS love. He’s the Originator of love. It all comes from Him. So 1John 4:8 takes the definition of love out of our own personal interpretations. This verse skyrockets the definition of love to levels beyond our imaginations, because God’s love has no limitations, and the power of His love has created all that we survey. This kind of love squashes whatever definitions we may have concocted about how love behaves. 1John 4:10(NLT) declares, “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

What’s your capacity to love?
Before we can even begin to talk about the kind of love we hope to receive, we must be confident in the kind of love that we, ourselves, are giving. 1John 4:12(NLT) informs, “No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”  Again, the love that God is teaching us about is His love. When we accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as our personal Lord and Savior, his Spirit comes to live inside our body temples. 1John 4:13(NLT) tells us, “And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.”  God lives in us through His Holy Spirit. This means that we have access to the fullness of His love, and this is monumentally good news!

We are commanded by Jesus Christ to love others through the love of God. This means that we are to love without fear, and God has empowered us to love this way. It’s a completely new and wonderful way of walking in love, but because many of us are so used to seeing love as an emotional risk, we miss the joy and confidence of God’s love altogether. 

When an individual views love as a risk, he or she is more concerned about what they are receiving than what they are giving. This is not a position of authority and power, but one of fear. Jesus Christ taught us that love operates in the complete opposite. He tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. This points the finger in our direction. God has given us the capacity to love through Jesus Christ, and we must examine our own motives and desires to ascertain whether we’re loving through Christ or through emotions that are mostly self-serving. 

Let it go
When a relationship doesn’t work out, it hurts like the dickens, but we can’t afford to wallow in self-pity and sadness. We should give ourselves a time limit for grieving, and once that short while is up, the heartbreak and sadness ends! It’s time to learn what God wants to teach us about His love. 

You’ve already seen the results of your brand of love. It’s wonderful and all, but God’s love is the only glue strong enough to hold a relationship together. Don’t build walls around your heart because someone broke it. Instead, build your faith in God. Let Him restore your heart and make it your priority to look forward to brighter days ahead. There are many reasons that we choose to hold on to the hurt. We keep going over it repeatedly, thinking that we did something wrong, or that we weren’t enough. We may even think we’re being punished. None of these are true. We are enough because we are complete in Christ. God isn't punishing us, He loves us to pieces. So, we must be courageous, because it doesn’t do us any good to blame ourselves or the other person.

The reality is that learning about God’s love protects our hearts, and not knowing enough about His love causes us to make the wrong choices. Some of the people we attach ourselves to are not meant to journey further with us. We need to let them go, and trust God that life will be sweeter. When our priority is to please God and to seek Him in all that we attempt to do, He will help us to make the right choices. As we grow in our knowledge of Him, we will better discern His plan and Will for our lives. And yes, heartbreak happens. It’s a part of life and sometimes we must go through it, but the operative words are “go through it.” When our faith is firmly anchored in God, we’ll always come out victorious on the other side. We’ll have a deeper love for Him, and a greater capacity to give His love to others.   

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“When Your Relationship Doesn't Work Out”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.