How to walk towards complete love in motherhood

You know what I have heard more times than I want the past year or so? When witnessing to an unbeliever about Christ and their response being ‘christians are hypocrites, and I don’t want any part of that religion’. This hurts my heart so much. I also have to fight off anger. But unfortunately, it is hard to have a rebuttal because I see it too.

This is why I am always saying we cannot sit in our salvation. We must stop believing that praying a prayer is good enough and then we can move on in our life, with no change.  We need to get in scripture everyday, we need to be pursuing Jesus more than the world, and asking God for revelations and encounters with Him! That is where life change happens. That is where Jesus transforms us, our life and our hearts. And that is when we can be true disciples of Jesus! 
I love 1 John 4:17. It is the verse that this week has been based off of. It is a beautiful truth and an invitation for us to take Jesus’ hand and follow Him, wherever He takes us! Here is the verse…

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

Now, first let me say we cannot let this verse intimidate and scare us! The enemy likes to take scripture and twist it and we must be on our guard against that. However, if this verse is convicting, then that's ok! See the beauty in our Father wanting to draw you near and into more intimacy. God loves us so much, He does not want us to sit in our salvation. He wants us to grow closer to Him and have a deep rooted relationship with Him! 

Secondly, this walk looks different for everyone. For example, my husband oozes love and caring for others comes easily for him. He is so rooted in Christ’s love that it seems he does not even have to try. Me, on the other hand, God had to completely intervene in my life, show up in a gigantic way, deliver me and reveal Himself to me in order for my heart of stone to begin to melt. So, we cannot look to others and their walk and expect ours to be similar. Our perfect Father knows us better than we do and He knows exactly what we need! So we simply need to draw near to him, and scripture tells us He will draw near to us.

Lastly, this is a never ending journey! There is no end game. There is no point when we say at last, I made it! We will never fully make it in this life. The vision we need to have is progress and fruit. Are we moving on the spectrum towards Jesus’ character? Are we seeing more fruit in our lives as we mature? Those are the questions we should be asking ourselves to evaluate our growth. For example, I used to be very quick to anger and had little to no patience, actually if it was on a scale I would have been negative in the patience department. But it is so beautiful to look back and see growth over the past couple years! Once I decided to let go and give it all to Jesus and decided to mature and grow in Christ, He began to transform me. And now I see significant fruit in both these departments. It truly is beautiful and I give all the glory to God, I never could have done it myself! However, I am not done. I still have room to grow and will continue to ask the Lord to purify me and chisel away at me throughout my whole life, I am nowhere near where I would like to be! Another way to view it is that we are continuously trying to close the gap between our character and Jesus’ character. 

If we are doing these things, if we are pursuing Jesus and our eyes are on Him, He will be chiseling away at us. He will be molding us into who He desires us to be. He will be teaching us how to love others and to be a light for His kingdom. Ladies, the world is dark right now. Our families need us to be shining brighter than ever for them. They need an example of what following Jesus looks like. They need an example of what perfect love is. They need to see that there truly is a difference with Jesus, and that is love, light, goodness and truth! 

So let’s agree to mature in Christ. Let’s agree to live as much like Jesus as we can. Let’s agree to be true disciples of Christ. Let’s agree to love our families with the complete, perfect love of Christ!