When Love Doesn’t Win (#441) — http://thegodjourney.com/2014/05/30/when-love-doesnt-win-441/

Outside the box of religious obligation, lies a road less traveled, into the heart of the father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place. This is the God, Jan the God, Jan the God. Does love always win? Always? I mean at the end of the age God will sum up things however he has in his heart to do it, but I'm more talking about in this life and the people around you, it might be your kids, it might be a friend, it might be someone broken that you've poured your life into and love them and they seem to reject all approaches of love and continue to be hurtful and destructive. Now what do you do? Is it because you're not loving enough? What does love not always win, at least in the short term? Hi, I'm Wayne Jacobson. This is the God Journey. I'm getting ready to head out here to a hot old Phoenix and by the time this plays I will be there and cooking, I guess, but also enjoying some rich, rich fellowship. I'm getting to spend some time with folks that I love, a couple that's invited me as part of the Israel trip with us and so we're hanging out in their home and with some of their friends and folks and then people just from the area who want to come join us, it's open. So there's a contact information on my travel page, it's not too late if you kind of want to fill in on us, but I think we're getting pretty full, particularly since we're trying to stay indoors since it's going to be a hot weekend. But looking forward to that, part of my time there I'm going to spend with John Lynch, author of Bo's Cafe and author of a book I just reviewed on my website, it's one he published late last fall or early winter, it's called On Your Worst Day and it's really his story and how God leads him into his life and for the most part of that, decades, not knowing God was even around and not acknowledging him and yet looking back, seeing how God was at work. It's interesting to read, I'd recommend you taking it on and I may get a chance to talk to him and we may get a chance to record some of that conversation for a future podcast, but I don't know yet, that's going to depend on just how things kind of unfold. As far as my own book's concerned, I've talked about it for a while, I'm working on a book called Finding Church, What If There Really Is Something More and I had a real sense of urgency about getting that done and if you've listened to the podcast you'll know, man I was working hard there and I had it done, thought it was done, all came apart, put it back together now and really enjoying that process of putting it back together, but I just don't have all the space in my life I had earlier to give it all that I've got and to get it done and I've just really had to take some space from the pressure of trying to get it done, which may have been mostly self-contrived, although I know I've talked about it enough that it made people hungry for it, so maybe I'll read another chapter or two on some podcasts this summer to kind of keep it going, but I don't know, I love how it's shaping up, but it still seems to be shaping. Things that I learned yesterday seem to be part of it and if I'd published it three, four months ago that wouldn't have been in there, so there's something else going on, I'm not really clear, but I've really just kind of let my heart get beyond the urgency of it and make sure we get it done in a way that is the best and hopefully communicates well the things that I think need to be said. In a conversation I still want to have with people, maybe we've missed the entire reality of church by encasing it in human systems and even some of the out-of-the-box crowd are desperately looking for another system, whether it's home church systems or some kind of programmed workbook, we can do this and I just know we can't and I want to have that story if we can't, how do we see God giving life to it? But that's up for another day. The Kenya story, put another blog up yesterday about Kenya, just an update some pictures. Boy, I love these people. I love the love they have for their fellow countrymen who are literally dying with lack of water and medicine and have no economy, no future, no education for children and the group we know from the Katali-Bagoma area, volunteers are up there right now building a dispensary, building school classrooms, drilling wells. The drill rig is up there right now and they're looking to find water geologists are certain they're going to find it so I'm going to be really grateful when I finally hear that they have and there's three functioning wells up there. But some of the costs have been overrun from what they were expected. By now about $20,000 from the $135,000 they thought would do all that. So we're a little bit off. It's part of a truck breakdown, part of doing business in that region of the country where there are so few options and if people know they have you over the barrel they're going to exploit you and they've had some of that. I keep working with them. We keep talking about better ways to do it and that's taken a bit of my time of late but to rescue 120,000 people who are literally dying in a region of the country that not only that the government doesn't even care about and what we've heard from them is no NGOs non-government organizations are in the area because it's just too costly to get things in place for people that live there. So it's an amazing story of love and compassion reaching out to those kind of folks. But I want to talk to you about something else today. I've got a list at Lifestream. It's called Lifestream Journeys and it's just an email list. It's a Yahoo group. There's probably 12, 1300 people on it last I checked but only 40, 50 participate with any kind of regularity. Some days it gets overwhelming. Most days it's gotten pretty quiet but it does provide a place who are sorting out what it is to live love to communicate with others who are and it's virtual. It's not people in your front room or people sitting across the coffee shop from you getting to talk but it's it's done amazing things for people. I've watched people come on the list for a while find some real wholeness and freedom and ability to communicate that and then move off the list and get on other things in their life but there was an there was an email on there a few weeks ago and it's written by Emmett and I wish I could remember Emmett's story. Emmett came on the list probably three or four years ago. I'm guessing I could be wrong about this and a pretty lost guy and pretty broken and a trucker was doing trucking not really a trucker but doing trucking just because it's the only job he could find to pay the bills and pretty lonely and I've I've watched his life go through incredible stuff incredible transformation. You could see it in different emails as that life takes on depth and meaning and he went to you know thought God had reconnected him with a long lost love and then that didn't turn out great turned out to be incredibly painful and Emmett wrote this email recently and there's just a lot of wisdom in what he wrote and so I asked him I said do you mind me sharing on the podcast and he said no absolutely not feel free to go ahead and he may write on this someday he's talking about writing he writes incredibly well incredibly clear as you'll see but I'm going to let Emmett be my guest today even though he's not here and I just want to process this letter with you because it really takes us to the question I asked earlier does love always win? What about the people you love deeply that are still getting lost or people you love differently that become hurtful and destructive inside the relationship? How does love deal with that and I love the way Emmett processed this and what kind of underscored maybe doing this for a podcast today before I leave town it's just I got an email this morning from a mom who's just struggling with trying to love two daughters who aren't new or older they're post-teenagers and getting into some kinds of trouble and frustrated about it how can she control it and or try not to control it and all of it comes back to what does love really look like? We try to define it about a year and a half almost two years ago now I was taking a break and I said let's wrestle with this definition of love and it didn't go far because I think the more you try to put your hands around a definition of love the more it escapes you. Love is not here are five principles that we can do and if we do we can learn to live loved. I do think at the heart of it is it's a whole hearted concern for someone's ultimate good even at our personal cost I think that's part of it. I think it's a delighted affection I think love we talked about compassion a few weeks ago love is a delighted affection it's not just a commitment to do good for someone it's a delighted affection for them but what do you do when that without the need to control or manipulate them but what happens when that delighted affection gets thrown back in your face? How does that work? And so I want to read this letter because Emma starts this way I'm doing some thinking about the subject of those that we have loved in this life in particular those whom we loved yet they didn't love us back didn't blossom or succeed didn't heal or maybe even just got more deeply into serious trouble or problems. I've come to learn we humans have an innate expectation to witness positive results in our eyes from the love and kindness we put out there and why not right? Love conquers all the better questions might be when and how but what if it is only father's will for us that we are transformed to love others and in some cases all we see as a result of our love is rejection or anger or denial in other words the love we express seems to backfire or even fuel someone else's issues could it be possible that our time of actively loving someone was only meant to leave them with a memory of such love? I've to add to consider Jesus he brought love life and healing but not everyone seemed to benefit as the gospel stories relate he offered the truth and freedom from worldly slavery yet he was still scorned and hated by many he didn't stop loving healing forgiving or redeeming how do we feel when love seems to do no good at all in some of our relationships can we identify with Christ can we move on in the spirit and go to a village that will receive us at some point or are we to be defeated by rejection or what seems like negative outcomes do we feel cheated do we feel like we wasted our time is it enough for us just to have loved as believers we know all too well about the pseudo love used as a magnet to control or steer others manipulation to serve one's self interest or just another ingredient in the recipe of a stew we're trying to make for ourselves it's not even God's love at all and it never bodes well if we love with father's love wouldn't it be natural to have no strings attached in a healthy relationship no self-interest but simple obedience to father's spirit and what if someone we love is hurting us or others is there a rule for that i don't think so i firmly believe father's spirit wants to navigate us in those situations and now he begins to go i'm going to break from the letter for a minute the the first part of of what he's asking and i love what he's asking when you love and there's no return when you love and it doesn't seem to benefit them the first concern which isn't isn't always at the heart of love love in its reality is selfless but us learning to love and getting self out of the way is quite a process i'm still in that process but i think love at its core is selfless it's not looking for anything in return it's not i'll invite you out for meal and i hope you invite me out for a meal and return i get that email a lot too of people who you know putting themselves out there and then they don't feel like that comes back to them and they're they're struggling with it because what what do i mean i mean i hope i hope love i want love and return and it seems like we think Jesus said not love one another as i have loved you but he says get love from one another because if i had a dollar for every email and conversation i've had with people who have been disappointed in love in the sense that they've put themselves out there and others haven't responded i'd be a wealthy guy because it is true as you see he goes to jesus as example how much loving healing forgiveness did he bring and how much was it not received what what do you do when love is rejected part of it in yet you got the boys and peter and james and john and the rest and they're struggling to learn to live love then peter has this big denial moment so there's there's obviously a place where we're learning to live in that space of being loved and it may look like rejection but it's just learning but then what if the person we're loving actually is being destructive to themselves or to us or to other people and where does love become codependent where does love means i'm i'm enabling you to do the things that are most destructive to you does love ever draw line does love ever and one of the words i really i i know i see a lot and people love it so i i'm the minority here but the phrase unconditional love there's nothing that just gives me that little yuck factor more than the hearing the unconditional love because because it really is a reaction to the kind of what we've called love in our religious settings which really i love you gives me the right to manipulate you and and we really see god as he loves us when we please him and he hates us when we don't so we've played love as this highly manipulative game and so to help people understand who've grown up in that religious construct of love and affection i get emails all the time that proved to me from scripture that god hates and so and i i know the language is there i know that some of the old testament writers felt like that was going on i think what jesus demonstrated when he was here was that god loves the world god's always loved the world he is poured out his life for the world god hates evil god hates the brokenness of sin god hates when people's arrogance or self-interest or whatever damages people around them there's things that god hates but in terms of god in my life today are there moments when he hates me and moments when he loves me and then forget about me let's take the the heathen in the world somebody has nothing not a clue who he is and living their life fully indulging their own desires is there days god loves them and days god hates them and if so what determines those days and religion always has to come to what's your performance you do good you get good if you do bad you get bad so if you do what god wants he'll love you and if you don't do what he wants he hates you and so when we come up with this idea of unconditional love but the reason i choke on that a little bit and i'm sure i've talked about this before is because i don't know what conditional love is there's the problem if you've got a thing called unconditional love then you're assenting to a reality that there is such a thing as conditional love and only in a human manipulative contrived event is there anything that we would call conditional love and is it love at all if i'm going to be nice to you if you're nice to me and i'm going to call that love see i think that's distorted and then people get into the conversation i get this email a lot having written he loves me which is oh so you just believe in this nice god warm fuzzies he's just good to everybody kind and i think no i i think god's love is the most incredible powerful dangerous reality in the universe i don't think god's love is i'm just nice to everybody i think god's love is i'm ultimately committed to your well-being and the well-being well-being of all other people on the planet now that love and how that mixes into the world i think that's what emet wrestles with here which i love look at jesus loving and getting refused and could it be that god just wanted the loving in the world regardless of how they respond today or next week is jesus saying to the rich young ruler sell all that you have and give it to the poor and then come follow me and the rich young ruler goes away deeply distressed because he can't do it was jesus loving him in that moment and what i understand about jesus is absolutely it was was he being nice to him well yes in the greater sense of i care about your well-being and you're so lost in your own performance and your own abilities and your own boasting about what you do to keep the law and you're so tied up in what you can do for you why don't you try to live inside what if you didn't have anything and now you've got to live inside god's caring for you and so he goes away distressed yes what does that distress work in time that we don't know i've i've said i would love if we found out somebody i think it would be in scripture if it were true because i think it'd be a fabulous story but if the rich young ruler was sol of tarsus who later became the apostle paul what if it was because sol was that kind of guy who thought he was perfect as to the law i mean sol's that guy we don't know scriptually that he's the same guy but he's the same character the same on the same track what if that's what jesus spoke to him and that works in him it even works in him while he's holding the coats as steven is being stoned and then it works in him as he meets jesus on the road see i think love is a long-term reality and loving someone without any thought as to whether they're going to give back to you care about you is the essence of what love is and that that is beyond any human reality if you don't get that kind of love from god you don't have it to give as a matter of obligation or responsibility to go love the world as an act of human effort you don't have it i don't have it the only reason i can love people in the space that i'm getting to love them now is because i've been loved by god in a way that sets me free to live inside loving other people even people who turn their back on you betray you lie about you even that i still hold affection in my heart for people who've done me wrong that that leads me to forgiveness it doesn't necessarily lead me to calling them every day or looking forward to spending time with them i mean look at the the prodigal father as he lets the boy go is he being loved yes does the boy know it no and the boy's getting lost in his own indulgence still absolutely loved by father but father doesn't mean the love of god doesn't mean i'm gonna run down there if you spend too much money i'm gonna give you more and i'm gonna if you get in trouble and need to be a slave i'm gonna stop that from happening i'm gonna buy you back and bring i'm gonna wait till you come home because love never manipulates because love can't manipulate and even the letter i got this morning from someone so concerned about their daughters and what they're really concerned about is how they look how does this make them look that their daughters are doing these things and yes they can all couch it in terms of what's righteous and unrighteous but the reality is our love sometimes even for our kids has more to do with how we think they reflect on us than are we in their lives for their ultimate good and if that means i need to let you go i need to give you the space to live out whatever it is that you think is more important see god does that in spades god does that all the time i love you i want to invite you the reality of this love you're refusing it you're rejecting it you're you're exploiting it you know what i'm not going to stop loving you but i'm going to love you more from a distance hoping you get to the end of whatever you think fixes you and it's mostly that that brings people home i don't think it always i get that email to you think you always have to come back to god after you know going through some horrible thing no yeah i don't people come to god all the time and begin to experience his love out of just a desire to know him others yeah it does seem like some people have to get to the end of themselves they have to go down some pretty rocky roads and get hurt a lot before they can finally turn around and say god what's next for me and so when it comes to how do we love when give me the rules tell me you know when i let go of my kid when i don't when i you can't get there another email question i get a lot having written he loves me is the story about jesus saying if you keep my commands you'll remain in my love and people want to make the point that that's a conditional if you keep my commands which we always i mean in a religious context that's such a horrible obligation language what why jesus really says if you follow me if you follow my ways the commands i read it like david read the commands in Psalm 119 he talks about he loves god's commands he's wanting to learn god's commands he wants to live in god's mind don't look at it as the religious obligation lists that we're supposed to meet to make god like us think of it is this is the way god thinks about the world this is the way he asks us to live and so jesus is saying if you keep my commands if you live in it then you'll remain in my love it's not saying i don't love those who don't keep my commands what it's saying is those who don't follow me don't get the benefit of my love and not as a reward he still loves you as as the father loves the prodigal son who's out indulgent in his sin and not getting captive to a pig farmer he's still loved but he's not living in the reality of that love love is not i will run and pick you up out of every ugly hurtful place you get into it's i love you enough to let you grow up to let you struggle with what you want to struggle with to come home in your time in your space and to know that when you do love is here love and forgiveness is here and so emma wrestles with that there have been people i mean he's talked about on the list so i i know some of what he's talking about of pouring out his life over months hoping love would win the transformation in someone's heart that it did not win and then realizing that my kindness to them is enabling it would be like the father running out to the boy who's running out of money and just giving him more giving him some of his older brothers might just you need more money you got to keep going here and and it just would be destructive love doesn't do what destroys so it doesn't manipulate it doesn't always rescue temporarily either and so what is it you have to walk away from some situations like that yes when do i do that and when do i don't and i love what he asks is back to emma's letter is it okay to call it quits and walk away from someone you love to stop loving how can a child of god stop loving is that even possible if so was it real love to begin with and i love that i don't think love ever gives up but love doesn't always make yourself a doormat either to other people's abuses so how do you navigate that and the question i read right before i broke from that of the first time i don't think so i firmly believe father spear wants to navigate us in those situations also in other words i don't know what love is i don't know how to love this person that person i don't know is it okay to call it quits i i think the answer is no what what is love if it quits it's if you benefit me but now see we get beyond love as just being nice and giving you everything you want to make you happy and many people think so that's what god's about in their own lives i don't know the love of god and what they mean is i'm not getting everything that i want you're getting from the father everything that you need and if you're not getting what it is that you think you need then you get to back up and say is there something else god showing me here that i don't know is there something else god's doing in my heart and life to set me free and that's what we'll begin to discover people look for rules and back to emet's letter people look or says on the other hand are all of father's children called by default to experience or even tolerate abuses neglect or martyrdom people look for the rules as i once did but today i find the freedom of the spirit to be the only way so what is okay what is not what is expected of me honestly i don't see how life can work this way at all who can answer these questions or judge us in the situations that were involved in i love that this is god's to navigate us through and i don't mean i need a word from god i need to know what love is from him as i see how god loves me not the rules of it the sense of it the reality it's it's a river to swim in now i can swim in that river with someone else and there's times yes i'll go the 95th mile even letting someone be abusive in hopes that we can turn it around and i will also not go the 95th mile won't even go the 10th mile was someone that i sense god saying wane step away this is going to hurt them and you it's not just about my getting hurt i can deal with that it's about them being hurt and them being destructive and there's some things i might be able to handle in a relationship of someone being more abusive than someone else either newer on this journey or having suffered much abuse in their past them being in that moment so where god might ask me to love is very different from where god might ask you to love that's what i loved about emma's letter emma's letter this doesn't come back to this is what you should do or shouldn't do or we can make the rules on this let's write it up it really is what is god asking me to do today in the capacity i have to love and with this person i care deeply about learning not to manipulate that's huge that's i think most of us particularly in religious contracts i religious constructs we've learned to manipulate in the name of love i'm doing this for your own good and i can do anything to pressure you manipulate you withdraw my affection harass you sue you gossip about you i can do anything i want because i'm only doing it for your own good that is such a deceptive lie and people who use that have not a clue what love is even though they talk about it all the time love is about caring for the other person's best well-being for their ultimate good and it it doesn't require them to pay the cost it takes the car that's the incarnation god takes the cost of our sin into himself he doesn't for our own good seek to destroy us but for our own good yeah he will he will let us have some space in hopes that our brokenness will catch up to ourselves and we'll turn back to him not in what i'm going to do to earn it but god i give up i really just need to know how it is that you love me and how i can walk in that that love and it continues the guidance we need to navigate these situations can only stem from you guessed it a community of relationship with father in real time just didn't tell his disciples to beat your head against a wall to no avail if it were meant for the evil in the world to be the physical or emotional death of all of us as we take up our crosses quote unquote i'd rather just call it slow suicide as believers to toss ourselves back into worldly thinking is suicide when father takes us home trust me on this we won't be making the choice for ourselves if we are following him i think many of us feel guilty sometimes for not letting someone inflict their wrath or continual rejection upon our lives as being such astute christians and all but many of us are called to move on and go forward another day loving others and being loved while those others we have love must go on to journey without us there are people i love but have simply had to part ways with i never stopped loving them in my heart but the relationship with them caused conflict pain rejection or conflict of interest or just was not creating healthy situations for one or both of us now that's that's often true right there hear that not i gave up because it was too painful for me but god saying it's got you've got to lay it down love can lay down the the idea of religious love you can only love what you can control and when people no longer are being controlled by you you can't love them anymore and i know people like that there's a book that scott peck wrote years ago called the people of the lie it is an amazing book if you've not read it find a copy it's it's an amazing book about people who who do this exact thing they everybody around them to serve them and they do it in such subtle ways that it creates disharmony in all all the people around them are incredibly dysfunctional and they look and sometimes these people fit incredibly well into religion because they're just so pleasant and so nice to everybody and when you see them from a distance you you wouldn't at all assume they're the problem but because people around them are so agitated and disturbed you get the idea that a person of the lie is someone who lives a lie in the name of love and there is a reality will there be times that god asks you to lay your life down even to the point of martyrdom even to that level of abuse there might be it certainly was for our early brothers and sisters they i don't know they laid it down the sense they were you know roam drug them into the well i found it wasn't the coliseum roam exterminated christians in a lot of ways but as i we heard from a guy at the coliseum in Rome no christians died here they didn't this wasn't about that they died over there down somewhere else but it wasn't about the coliseum they had them down in the hippodrome for for other reasons is there times when god's going to ask us to keep loving in the face of someone's abuse and that winning the moment yeah it might could god ask us to do that for a long time and it doesn't win the moment and god says you know what take a break let this one go yeah how do we know only by listening to him i love that you can't live this christian journey without christ you don't know what it is to love without him love begins in him love finds it's fulfillment in him so he as emet talks about this communicative relationship i love that but it's not just a communicative relationship i think that's part of it i'm listening to him the other part of is i see how he's loving me and i swim in love as a reality and now when i'm just loving people just out of the naturalness of growing in love myself there are moments i just know i've got to stop here now there's moments i think i'm going to stop here because this hurts too much for me that the next step is no it's not that's just me but there are times you just know you know what i gotta step away from this the destruction is too great it may be my capacity to love isn't there yet and maybe that and i think that's fair i think god's saying you know i'm not putting you in a place you're not ready for and other times it could be the best thing to do is to walk away the best thing not just for you the best thing for them is to walk away to love them from a distance and to let love take its hold last paragraph now from a minute i it can be hard to trust father with the life of someone we are used to caring for but the reality is if i can trust him with my life oh wait a minute maybe that's my problem he says i remind myself often that father's love expects nothing in return it liberates people and sets them free what other choose to do with their freedom is out of my hands completely if i give a drunk five dollars for lunch and he spends it on more booze instead i have still followed god's spirit for all i know it may be that exact bottle of booze that creates a situation that results in him getting help or not either way i'm just following the spirit loving him and giving him the choice to eat or not people will do what they choose to do at some point i realize i have zero control over that i think that's the power of love right there parents of older kids even younger kids that i don't want to get into the whole parenting thing at the moment but particularly with older kids you have zero control i hear from parents have my kids you know 1920 how do i get them to do i i told both my kids at 18 i'm done fixing you and you're not fixed yet i'm not fixed yet either but i'm giving it a god i'm gonna let god do what god wants to do in you i'm not gonna be your change agent anymore i'm going to be your dad i'm going to love you and you want my help come get it you can always have my help i'll always be here for you and i will always love you but i'm not going to use my fatherhood to keep trying to influence the way you live you get to live however you choose to live and what you need to know is i'm always going to be here loving you even when you do things that i wish you wouldn't do and even if i do things that i think god would wish you didn't do i'm still going to love you i'm still going to be here with great affection for you and i want that affection to win the day but i have zero control back to emit i have to talk with father and ask him to care for them to guide them to heal them to protect them he's done that for me and i believe he would do the same for them but i don't think he would take away one's freedom to choose along the way is that not the hardest reality of love really i'm gonna i'm going to love you have affection for you forgive you when you do stupid things towards me and i'm just going to stay in that spot of loving you but i can't control you and that means yes i'm going to hurt when you do hurtful things to yourself but i'm not going to stop loving you to protect me from the hurt one of my best stories about this Dave Coleman guy that helped write so you don't want church anymore with me Luther and pastor been defrocked 25 years before i ran into my particular skirmish with the last congregation that i pastored in and he and his wife become be part of it he and i became good friends we taught some classes together tried to get him to get into eldership at some point he wasn't interested and then he and his wife vanished for a time and other elders what happened to them i don't know i mean i just too hurt for relationships i you know whatever you blow it off and then they came back toward the end of my time there and some of the conflict that was growing among the elders and my getting exiled from that place and i was talking to him one day i said dave where did you guys vanish for a while he said oh man he said i knew i knew you're about to get killed he said you didn't love power as much as the people around you loved it and i knew it was going to take its toll on you and i couldn't bear to look at it and i said yeah but you were back when it happened he said that was the other thing i said what was that i couldn't bear to let you go through it alone boy that's what love does i can't bear to let you go through this alone even if it's your own stupid choices even if it's not just what's being done to you but it's what you're doing to yourself love doesn't distance itself because it doesn't want to hurt love distances itself because it becomes the the kindness in the midst of bondage becomes destructive and i know that's almost impossible to explain and yeah does that mean people can make up their own excuses to live however they want and you know justify it as well that's how god's leading me yeah everything about god can be abused but i love wrestling with this whole thought of what if love doesn't win now at the end of the age does god get to win the whole world into his redemption yeah he does get a new heaven and a new earth out of it does that mean everybody gets saved in the end people want me to believe that i don't think scripture makes that point i don't think we have to go there to have a loving god i don't think we have to say more than scripture says or take all these scriptures and ignore all these other scriptures and we've been down that road before so i might say love wins i don't mean necessarily everybody gets home because love never seeks to control love sets people free love can be rejected and i guess that's what we're talking about in the short term love rarely wins there's a lot more people i love than love back there's a lot of people i love for which the fruit of that love doesn't appear for years decades later i like what emit said about loving someone maybe it's the memory of love that god wants them to have so we don't have to look for the result to be what we want it's just to have a wholehearted concern for someone's well-being to care about them to be in their life with them in ways that you see that are constructive but it doesn't mean being nice to everybody all the time love is the affection for another person that goes way beyond their performance or failures it just i'm willing to love you even if the loving you lets you go into destruction that i won't stop for you because ultimately it wouldn't be in your best interest to stop it learning to love others the way god wants them loved man there's enough adventure in that for a lifetime thank you for traveling with us today on the god journey you can join this conversation by visiting the godjourney.com or add your voice by calling our comment line at 805-539-6980