You are created in God’s image!
We all seem to know and understand that this encompasses the concepts of body, soul and spirit. Consider that it also includes character and nature. God is love. Therefore, you were created in love, through love and most importantly – for love. We were created to receive and give love. Consider Jesus, everything he did was an outflow of his relationship of love with His Father. He tells us in scripture that He was only doing what He saw His Father doing. Now if God is love in His basic nature and character, then everything He does is out of that love-and therefore, everything Jesus did was our of that love. Jesus ministered from this relationship. He had no need for a ministry but everywhere He went–ministry happened. Jesus ministered out of His relationship with Heavenly Father, not power, not gifting…these things flowed out of relationship.
There are four basic emotional needs that God programmed in us when He created us.
- Need for love God created us with this need for love, so when we are thirsty we drink from whatever comes along. We were designed to drink intimacy only from our Heavenly Father. If we are not rooted and grounded in God’s love, we will plug into something else. We are instructed by Jesus to seek first the kingdom of God–there are other things we seek but the kingdom should take the majority of our time efforts and motive. This kingdom is a kingdom of love. God wired us this way, to receive love from Him so that we can give love away.
- Security When you receive unconditional love, it causes you to feel secure in that person’s presence. God wired us with a need for security. when we don’t have a sense of security through knowing and experiencing unconditional love of the Father, we look for it elsewhere. This eventually leads to problems. We experience insecurity because we are then giving others control over whether we have a good or bad day. How they treat us becomes an out of ordered priority in our life.
- Praise –Affirmation — A sense of value God created us to have intimate and loving relationships. Do you know that the Father loves it when we praise Him? He enjoys it! God praises us and blesses us when we bless Him. God wants us to have a divine exchange with Him where the praise we receive comes from Him and not from others. Our primary source of affirmation and value must come from God. If we look for or expect it from others, we will constantly be disappointed and hurt. Our primary source must be God.
- Have a purpose God wired us with a purpose. A mission. A reason for being. He created us in His image as a gift of love. When our families see us-or our friends and neighbors see us-they should see the Father. No one is an accident! We were all created to be a gift of love. Do you know that the love of God in you is meant to be given as a gift to others? Those who God has put in your life are meant to be recipients of His love through YOU! So often we attempt to fulfill this purpose through the things we do, rather than in who we are. “We are human be-ers” not “human do-ers”.
You were created to receive Gods’s love and then to give it away.
You were created for love! It is difficult to give away something that you are not even aware you possess. Spend time in the presence of God and just receive His love for you. God loves you more than you can imagine! Give away the love of God-just let it happen. If God is love, and we are all His ambassadors-representatives, the the love of God IN us must be given away!