What Kind of Love...?

Recently, I've been given the privilege of loving someone who is in desperate need of healing and healthy changes. This person is a beautiful and talented person with a kind heart, but has made choices over the years that have left them bankrupt spiritually and physically poor. Although this person knows of God's love, they choose to remain in their poverty and slavery. They are homeless...in every sense of the word.

I have prayed for this person for years, but recently had decided that since they didn't want to change, I would simply pray for them and leave it at that. I didn't know how to relate to someone who didn't want to change, much less see their need for change; so I decided to only pray for them and to care less whether I saw them or not. I didn't know what to do with them, so this was the most honest and loving thing I could do. And I was certain that Jesus understood and agreed with me.

Weeks later, the Lord led me to a scripture that clearly said the opposite. To be honest, I looked it up in other translations and read study notes from a variety of study bibles trying to find some excuse or explanation that would let me off the hook. I found none. So, I surrendered and said yes to what Jesus was clearly and simply saying. And I'm glad that I did.

When I told the Lord that I would obey, I expressed to him how frustrating it was to be with someone who so desperately needed to change for their own well-being but wouldn't. In response, I heard him ask this: "What if they never change? Will you love them anyway? If they never change, will they go to their grave knowing that they were loved by you? Or will you love them only if they show you the changes that you hope to see? I want you to love them in such a way that, if they died today, they would know that you not only loved them, you really liked them."

After hearing this, I saw how conditional my "Christian love" had become. I saw that the only kind of love that I was offering people was not the love that God has for them; instead, it was the very same kind of love that has screwed them up (screwed me up!) to begin with - only it was dressed up in my own self-righteousness and smugly called "Christian". How sick.

In all of my life, when I was at my worst and sunk in my own sin, in the multitude of my selfish refusals of his love and the gift of change, Jesus has always shown me that he loved me deeply; and, most beautiful of all, that he really liked me and wanted to be with me. His love never left me in my mess, but it also never said I had to change; it made me want to change; no, love itself changed me.

And that's the only reason I've ever changed at all...unconditional love.