Love When It Hurts, Forgive When It Costs

The Story of Unconditional Love

We live in a world where the term “love” is thrown around quite a bit, so the idea of love can get very confusing.

I have heard there are three basic forms of love.  There is a love between friends, the intimate and mysterious love between two people, and the love of God.

Hopefully, all of us experience the love between friends.  And it is my prayer that everyone would experience the intimate love with another if that is their desire.  But today, I want to look at the unconditional love of God.

Be With Me In Paradise

What is the unconditional love of God?  It is that Jesus Christ loves us in spite of our faults and failures.  He looks beyond what we have done to see who we are.  If you looked at the heart of God and His unconditional love, you will find the children He has created.

How do you receive the unconditional love of God?

Have you ever read the story of the thief on the cross?  In that story, Jesus Christ forgives the repentant thief for all his crimes, simply because the thief asked for it.  That’s it.  There is nothing more to receiving God’s unconditional love than asking Jesus to forgive you.

The Thief on the Cross

One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:39-43

God Is Love

Why does God give us His unconditional love?

The easy answer is because God is love.  That is His nature.  Let us contrast God’s nature with the nature of the devil.

The enemy of all mankind does not care what men do to themselves.  His nature is to lie, because he is a liar and has been a liar from the beginning.  John 8:44, in reference to the devil, says, “Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

But the apostle, John, tells us, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8

Discover Jesus Christ

I think we can all say we have been exposed to love and lies in our life.  Ultimately, we have the choice to follow one or the other.  We can either believe the lie, directly or indirectly, or we can believe the love God has for us.

Love is so much better than lies, so I think it only rational that we believe in love.  And if we believe in love, then by extension, we are believing in God, whether we want to or not, because God is love and He is the source of love.

It is my desire that you discover Jesus Christ, who He is and what He has done so that you may have eternal life with Him when this life is over.  Until then, we should learn to show God’s unconditional love to anyone we meet.

So, how do you express the unconditional love of God?  Glad you asked.

In my experience, it comes down to two main points.

• Love When it Hurts

• Forgive When it Costs

Love When It Hurts

This is the hardest to do.  To love someone when they have hurt us deeply is almost impossible, but not quite.  There is a place in our heart that we can reach which will allow us to find the peace we need inside, to be able to love the other person.

There are many examples of pain with others, but I believe we should start with the family.  Too many families are broken by contention and division for countless reasons.  If families were not at odds with each other then we would see many of our problems disappear.

I spoke with a friend recently and asked how the relationship was with her mother.  We have often discussed our mothers and the challenges with them as they age into the next life, but my friend struggled just to get along with her mother.  No matter what she tried, her mother would always be contentious and that wounded my friend.

This time though, when I asked, she said the relationship with her mother was great.  She attributed the change to unconditional love.  In her heart, she let go of everything about her mother that bothered her and decided to just love her mother, no matter what she got in return.

Her reward was a renewed relationship with her mom.

My friend’s story illustrates loving someone even when you have been hurt and even when it may be painful to do.  That is what it means to love when it hurts.  It is the first and most difficult point to achieve when we want to show God’s unconditional love.  To love in spite of the pain.

Forgive When It Costs

Loss is hard, particularly when the harm comes through another person.

There is a husband and wife who were building a home and their contractor took advantage of them financially.  The abuse was not discovered before the contractor was finished but the couple had two choices.  To chase him for the excess he stole or to forgive him his debt.  In their hearts, they let go of their loss and chose not to seek it back.

I am reminded of the Lord’s Prayer.

‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
‘Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
‘Give us this day our daily bread.
‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’] Matthew 6:9-13

That line, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” is a powerful and difficult statement.  I think the marriage vow, “For better or worse” is derived from this one declaration.  The “better” is easy but often the “worse” is what breaks us.

In a sense, we are all “married” in this life.  Not as husband and wife.  But we are all part of the human race.  Like it or not, we are all connected.  We cannot escape the people in our lives and as a result, our relationships are often broken by the debts of others.  Those relationships can be healed if we forgive when it costs us.

Come To Jesus

Forgiving the sins of others against us can be a painfully deep thing to do.  Our human nature goes against forgiving others when they take advantage of us, but when we remember that at times, we are the debtor for another, then it can be easier to forgive.

God knows we are going to step in it because that is our nature.  He wants us to come to Him to get cleaned up so that we can enter heaven.

Revelation 22:14 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.”

Come to Jesus.  Experience the unconditional love of God.  And through your relationship with Him learn how to love when it hurts and forgive when it costs.