The greatest joy in life is to love and be loved. (Google cites a range of people who said this)
It's not so hard to be loved, you can do a lot of things with the sole intention of getting people to like you or winning people over: buy things for people, spend time with people, pamper people with things they like. It is probably harder to feel loved - cos that has not so much to do with other people, but more to do with how you perceive love. And it is harder to love, without wanting to "get love back", as love should be.
Dave Lomas last week spoke of how as humans we are creatures who love: we put all our hope and attention and effort (and our souls) into this one thing that we love (whether we admit that we love it or not). I was once someone who decided that people are too fickle to return my love so I won't waste time on that, instead I will put my energy and attention into things that won't disappoint me - my work my studies, things I have control over, things that will reward me for the effort I put in. We put effort into where we can get rewards back.
I'm beginning to think that you can't love well until you are no longer preoccupied with whether u are being loved. I realize we often "give love" in the hopes of getting love back, we are kind to people we want to be friends with, we make extra effort to be nice to first years to keep them in sonrise. or we "give love" to people who have given us love, this person helped me in this way, therefore I will treat him/her to that. And we are reluctant to love on people who have nothing to offer us: people who may show us their love for us in a way that we don't receive love (eg how my housemate loves to buy me little trinkets that occupy space and are not useful at all) or people who may harm us or undermine our self esteem, why should I spend time listening to my grandma when all she does is nag at me to plead with my dad and convince him to come home and say I'm fat and eating my brothers' portions. I remember a time when I considered that it is a waste of time to spend time with people who don't build you up in love. But the ways we practice "loving" makes it a cold transaction. This person is generous in time and money to me, this person encourages me, this person cares for me, so I will return the love. This person does not demonstrate to me that I am valued, so I'm going to cut this person out of my life. So often we are seeking to be loved rather than wanting to give out love.
So many times I have told people over and over, or people have told me that they hear this over and over: "God loves you", and the reply to having heard that so many times is: "yea I know that God loves me completely as I am. But I still want someone in my life!" And there will be people who will remind you, "even when you have someone in your life, you still won't feel like you have "gotten there", because there will always be a next step - to get married or to have kids or to earn a certain amount". Everything is a process, there are no criterion by which people can certify that "you have arrived". God has prepared someone for you. It is Himself. That was my CG leader's realization. Nobody else but God Himself. God has a plan for your life, a process that He already pre-determined for you to go through to grow you. The only choice that we need to take is whether to continue following Him and seeking Him or to do it our way.
In Mere Christianity CS Lewis says:
“But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
Look for self-worth and you will not find it. Look for love and you will not find it. Instead, give love away freely, accepting God's promise that He has your eternity taken care of, that this life is but a twinkling of an eye in light of eternity. A friend used this analogy, he had such a good dinner and was so full that even though he walked past other yummy places he didn't want it because that would just make him puke. How can we be so full of God's love for us that we don't desire anyone else? (yet not going too far in the opposite direction, becoming consumed by pride that we are doing so well, just God and me, that we don't need anyone else, and cut everyone else out)
I don't think there are things you can do to get there. I don't think there is a step-by-step list of things to do to become so full of God's love for you, and so filled with joy that you don't desire anyone else. We know that we need to enjoy God's company by being in community, by praying regularly. But even then perhaps it will be a lifelong struggle, dying to that desire of having someone else or something else other than God (like maybe God was not enough?). Perhaps we could start by focusing more on how we can love people who do not love us back, focusing more on caring for people and being present for people, even people who don't have any attention or energy to spare for you or people who cannot return the favor. As far as we can do that without expecting some kind of blessing from God in return - it will come as and when He pleases, it will come when you don't expect it. Seek God's heart for the people, see how He loves people, devote yourselves to others, even at your own expense, those who are saved, those who may not yet be saved, those who many never be saved. It will be challenging, but it is always in challenges where God grows us the most.
In Mark 9, a father, wanting to save his son from seizures, pleaded with Jesus, "I believe! Help me to overcome my unbelief!". I believe that Jesus will help us to align our desires with His, if we would let Him.
