A friend sent me this video today. It really struck me – not so much that God doesn’t give us His heart in pieces, but gives it all at once to us, but that people are completely unable to NOT love in pieces. We are all broken in so many ways, and our flesh keeps everyone consumed with what’s best for me and looking out for number one, so we can never on this earth love completely, wholly, perfectly like God.

What really stands out for me though is the importance of us realizing that, not only are we incapable of doing it perfectly, no one in our lives – or even outside of our present circle – can love us perfectly.  We are all yearning for someone to know us and accept us, warts and all, and love us unconditionally, expressing that love continually, without interruption. We also demand that they convey that love in a way that makes us “feel” loved, but everyone’s natural instinct is to love others in the manner that makes them feel loved.

However, the search for perfect love from anyone on this earth is doomed from the start.  There is a reason that the biblical word used for love, “agape”, isn’t found anywhere else.  Perfect love, whole and complete love, only comes from God, and we are setting ourselves up for disappointment when we look for it elsewhere.   Even more frustrating, we rarely recognize and feel God’s love for us, even though He is pouring it out endlessly upon us.

We all have our own ideas of how love should look.  An example from my own life would be asking my husband why he married me. (You should have seen the look of panic in his eyes – he figured it was a trick question, and no matter what he said, he would lose!)

At first he said he didn’t know (wrong answer), and then decided because it was the Christ in me that he fell in love with. Now you would think that would be an excellent answer that would truly fulfill me. Instead, my buzzer went off (like on Family Feud for a wrong answer), because in my mind at that time, men can only love a woman if they are beautiful, or in the absence of beauty, because they are smart or talented or some other redeeming quality.  If he didn’t say he loved me for any of those reasons, he really didn’t love me.  (He was right – trick question with no way to win!)

From the moment we are born, we are looking for love, and ways to get love from the significant people in our lives.  They have all failed us in one way or another, and we have problems because of that.  However, we could release a lot of our pent up anger and frustration about their failure to love us as we believe we need to be loved if we just recognized that these people we want love from can only love us in pieces because they are broken themselves.  They are incapable of loving us the way we want, even need, and will never be able to meet that need the way we desire.

That will really upset many of you. “You mean I will never receive the love I am looking for here on earth?”  Not from another human being, no. I know you don’t want to hear it or believe it, but it is a truth which you must embrace as quickly as you can, or you will live in disappointed anger for the rest of your life. Perfect love, the type that casts out fear, only comes from God.

People can only love us imperfectly, in the only way they have learned to love, and only at the times when they are able to love.  Write it on a note card and paste it to your car windshield visor. Send yourself text, email or calendar reminders. Do whatever you need to do to accept the truth that looking on earth for perfect love from someone other than God is a fruitless, exhausting endeavor.

Once you accept it, you will finally be able to receive the imperfect love that the people around you are capable of offering as enough for now.  You will experience the real deal, the soul fulfilling complete acceptance of agape love once you reach heaven.   In the meanwhile, you need to adjust your expectations of the others around you and stop trying to manipulate or demand that they give you more than they are capable of giving. Trying to get the love that satisfies from people is like trying to get Coca-Cola from a cow.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. James 4:1-2