Let Them Love You (8-13-23)

Do you reject compliments, explaining why you don’t really deserve them?  Do you get nervous when someone does something nice for you, turn down offers of help even when you could really use them, or hate the feeling you get when someone forgives you or extends grace and kindness your way?  Today’s show is on letting other people love you.

It can be scary and humbling to let someone love you and give you grace.  The enemy (i.e., Satan) will try to exploit this by encouraging you to think that you are in a one-down position.  Sometimes it is easier to accept good things from a stranger because we do not worry there will be an ongoing obligation in the relationship.  But grace, kindness, forgiveness, and help are meant to be gifts of honor.  Do not insult the person trying to honor you by rejecting that honor. 

So how do we honor the gifts of love others give us?  Well, if we are gifted forgiveness, grace, and covering, change is the best response.  Grace helps us have energy to get up again and do it right, to fix what we have broken, to undo what we have done.  Allow people to love you when you mess up.  Love covers a multitude of sins (I Peter 4:8).  Covering often sounds negative to us because we confuse it with toxic secrecy or enabling.  The kind of covering that God does for us, however, is not like this; it is a gift of grace meant to protect us while we are working on repentance and change.  Think of covering wounds while they heal; we do not just bleed all over the house and allow the wounds to be open and exposed to further harm.  We cover wounds appropriately to help them heal.  Covering or hiding as a gift of grace means that those who love us choose not to expose our ugliness while we work on repentance and change, knowing that change takes time.  God gives more because He has endurance people do not.  Covering is not permission to keep deepening the wound; covering is beautiful.

If we are given courtesy or help, we can offer a sincere thank-you.  Do not insult the person offering good because you are uncomfortable.  Give courtesy and graciousness in exchange.  Accept the gesture and be grateful for the thought.  Good boundaries will help with this; do not try to read the person’s mind or assume their expectations without knowing them.  If there is a motive, you are not obligated to recognize it unless they tell you.  Unless you have real reason to believe they want something in return (e.g., the person has a history of trying to put you in his/her debt, or there are clear signs of a scam in play), then you cannot read minds to figure it out.  You can, however, be nice.  You can be polite, gracious, forgiving.  “Our Father is kind; you be kind [Luke 6:36, The Message version].”  Cinthia continues, “Kindness supports peace, and peace loves to linger.  See, peace is a quality that expands.  Kindness is a quality that is catching.  God is a God of peace.  He’s always going to war with the people that are harming us.  And there needs to be that protection, and He’s able to restore and protect and to save those that are oppressed, harmed, wounded, injured.”  So be gracious in your responses to others, and do not allow suspicion to steal the joy of the gift.  If you find later that someone had ulterior motives (e.g., wanted something in return), you can say “no” then.  You can say, “I wish you would have told me you were needing/wanting something in return.  What can I do?”  And if you cannot do what they want, you can tell the person that you will not be able to accept help from him/her in the future.

Cinthia discussed I Corinthians 13 and encouraged little ways to give kindness and spread mercy and truth.  She also encouraged self-forgiveness, explaining, “The only reason for having baggage is not having attended to it; move on,” and, “You’re going to be able to love deeply if you also forgive yourself.”

Finally, Cinthia discussed Attachment Theory, which therapists use to discuss how humans attach, and how the motives behind a tendency to reject love often have to do with fear.  She discussed the messages people with avoidant or ambivalent attachment styles can send others, such as, “Come here; go away,” and, “I could take or leave you.”  She discussed both fear of rejection and fear of acceptance, explaining that God has made humans to need connection and that our defensive structures try to protect us from the pain of not being connected, as well as the pain of being connected, which is also threatening.  Our defensive structures protect us too well; our radars give us false readings.  We try to protect ourselves from harm, but we protect ourselves from what we need.  There are scary implications for acceptance – fear of relationship, commitment, being loved or wanted, fear of the future, coming to depend on someone and then getting rejected, etc. – But the attempt to avoid this pain and loneliness tend to encourage a constant level of pain and loneliness.  Are you ambivalent about relationships?  Some part of you really wants connection, but it really frightens another part of you. 

Cinthia recalled the “False Evidence Appearing Real” definition of fear and encouraged identifying the core beliefs behind our fears of accepting good from other people.  For example, one might say to himself, “I’m not a good risk.  I’m not going to do this -- all I’ll get is let down.  I’m just going to keep working on myself by myself until I feel confident enough to put myself out there.” Cinthia recalled struggling with her own core beliefs about herself and realizing that part of acceptance was accepting herself.  She explained that God finally said to her, “Cinthia, I didn’t consult you when I created you.  I made you for me.  I’m happy with you.  I like the way I made you.  I’m excited to spend eternity with you, Cinthia.  So you can either get on the same page as me, or you can be miserable until you come home.”  This led her to work on accepting the things she could not control, picking battles differently, getting stuck on fewer things, letting things go, etc.

We need to know the God Who loves us and to begin to accept ourselves.  The more I accept myself, the safer I am to other people.  The fears of acceptance and rejection never go away until heaven, so we need to let people love us.