Filling an Empty Well

We love because God first loved us. This verse from 1 John chapter 4 tells us all we need to know about where the ability to truly love someone originates. Love is not something that we summon up within ourselves apart from God. It is something that a believer appropriates from the Spirit of the One who is love. Yes, that appropriation comes from inside in the sense that the Source is living within us but, ultimately, love comes down from our Father in Heaven. If only we could live more deeply in this truth.

Who among us has never known an absence of love in ourselves at a time when the giving of it was so needful? At such times we may try to obey the greatest commandment by performing a loving act despite feeling like we have nothing to give. Perhaps this is sometimes necessary but if we are always not acting from God’s love within us then our attempt to love in our own strength will eventually turn to bitterness. The problem is that we are trying to scrape love from the bottom of an empty well. In time we weary of the effort and even begin to resent the person we feel that we should love. When this happens it is a sign that a Christian has strayed far from the only true Well.

How, then, do we love with the love of God? The only way is to receive His empowering love for those who need it is through receiving that same love for ourselves. Only in this way will what has been called our “love tank” be filled to the point that we can overflow to others.

This sounds so simple. The problem is that what seems so elementary on an intellectual level is not so easily grasped in our hearts. There are blockages which keep us from knowing the love the Lord has for us in such abundance. These blockages need to be worn down until they no longer frustrate His will to bless us, and others through us. It is here that our wills come into play. We have the responsibility to search out the causes of the walls which hinder divine love from reaching the core of who we are. These causes sometimes have to do with damage done to us by others. Other times they may be the result of sins we ourselves have committed. Often it is a combination of the two, we are sinned against and then sin in response.

Once a believer knows what these issues are he or she can decide to take responsibility for dealing with them. If the problem springs from pain we have suffered that has made us wary of love we can surrender that pain, and its results, to the healing hands of Jesus Christ. If it is more an issue of our own sin we can make the decision to sincerely repent of whatever that sin may be and ask His forgiveness. It does not matter if it is healing we need or pardon from sin or both. God Himself will tear down the walls keeping us from His love if we are willing to surrender our “right” to hold on to them. This may take time, just as it took time for us to become people without the ability to truly love. But however long it does take the God who is love continues to love us and because of this we can eventually come to love both Him, and others, in a way we could never have hoped for.