Love is not a prize

​"Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect." ~Brene' Brown

One of the most dangerous elements of this belief system is it comes to shape our relationship with God. When we spend a life making choices driven by efforts to please humans, it's easy to start living life obsessed with trying to please God.

When we live life defeated by the reality we can never please humans, we can begin to live life believing there's no way to please God.

This stands in the way of one of God's most beautiful gifts to us. The gift of us forever knowing what God thinks about our imperfections.

In Ephesians 2:8-9, we read, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

In these verses, God is reminding us that his loving-kindness for us is not a reward for our behavior. It's just the way God feels about us. Love in its purest most perfect form.

God is reminding us that no matter where our efforts fall on the perfection scale today, whether it's a 0 or a perfect 10, his love for us never fluctuates.

His love has no scale, love is simply who God is.

Maybe that's what is so challenging about human relationships. Love fluctuates so much. Even in the closest of relationships. And it often fluctuates in response to choices.

I guess that's why God wants us to know how insignificant boasting about our works is to him. He knows how debilitating and exhausting feeling the need to boast is in so many of our human relationships.

God knows it's debilitating to spend so much time trying to be noticed for who we are or what we're doing or what we've accomplished instead of simply being noticed because we are loved.

It's really hard to imagine having already received God's love when we're so busy trying to earn love from everyone outside of him.

I want us to be reminded that one of God's greatest gifts to us is giving us the chance to show up to him every minute of every day perfectly loved. Perfectly and unchanged from the last time we showed up to him.

Maybe we can help others come to better know this gift, better feel it, by being a little more perfect with our love for one another.

That's a tall order for us. God's nature is only love, ours has a fair amount of evil mixed in. But we can work on it, we can challenge ourselves to be more accepting and less fluctuating with our love.

We can take imperfect steps toward loving each other because we love each other, and not because each other has earned the grand prize of love.

God's greatest gift to us is his unmerited love.

God's greatest gift is to constantly reassure us that love is not a prize, it is simply love.

What a beautiful gift.

One well worth giving to others.