unleashing the power of prayer
Can you guess the four most often heard words in counseling rooms across the Nation and the World?
The answer, hands down, is this:
“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me, Daddy?”
“Do you love me, Mom?”
“Do you Love me, Boyfriend?”
“Do you love me, Girlfriend?”
The desire to be loved is the most basic craving of our hearts that when left unmet, it leads to broken hearts and messed up lives.
The problem is that the way we most often measure love, is EXTERNAL—words of affirmation and approval, physical touch, passion, gifts and service, acts of kindness.
In this chapter Beth refers to the “empty cup” that we all carry from person to person asking,
“Can you fill this?”
“Can YOU fill this?
“How about You or You or You???”
When I was a little girl, my love cup was never full and most of the time was never even acknowledged. My Dad, who never received love as a child or a young man himself, simply had no experience or understanding of the love needs of a little girl. As I grew from a child to a young woman, I continued to seek that greatly needed love “in all the wrong places”, as the song goes.
I continued to seek an outward expression of an inward craving. All I found instead was more loneliness, more shame and a dirtier and dirtier cup.
It makes me think of the birth bath in my backyard.
When it is empty it gets all muddy, dirty and cracked inside. It gathers old dead leaves and looks abandoned and rather sad. Until finally, I get out there and scrub the inside with bubbly soapy water then fill it with clear cool water. When I do, that abandoned birth bath becomes the place to be for all the neighborhood birds. It turns into a party place of refreshment and frolic.
Our lives are much the same.
The deep craving that God built into our lives is for His “AGAPE” God-Kind of love, cannot be filled by anyone or anything other than Him. That is just the way He designed us and He will not let anyone or anything take His place. God’s Love is not like the love of any man or any woman. His love is selfless, sacrificial, unlimited and unearned.
Every other kind of love is just someone else’s version of trying to fill THEIR cup!! It is limited, temporary and has agenda’s attached.
Love that is expressed outside of the God Kind of Love is selfish at best and as Beth shares from Proverbs 19:22 …
”A Lie”.
God’s love is INTERNAL not EXTERNAL so none of those things that we desire will ever replace it, nor ever FILL OUR CUPS once and forever. They will always leave us dry and cracked and dirty, at some point or another.
It is only when we experience God’s AGAPE love that the inside of our cup is cleansed and filled to the point of splashing over the sides and drawing others towards us.
Mark 12:29-31 defines it beautifully as love that rises up from the heart, embraces the soul, illuminates the mind THEN reflects in our actions. Until we have it, we are incapable of giving it away.
You cannot give away what you do not have.
When we finally “get it”, when we come face-to-face, heart-to-heart, cup-to-cup with the true and living God, we never face another day, another encounter, another rejection, another heartbreak, another failure or loss, that He will not fill with His Agape Love.