Join me in this… let’s ask ourselves the question: “Have I mistaken being useful for being loved?”
Before you continue reading, please pause and contemplate that question again. Take a minute or two to think about it.
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There is something deeply satisfying about being needed. Someone calls because they know that you know what to do. Something breaks, and you can fix it. A family leans on you. A team waits for your answer. A friend trusts your judgement. A partner says you’re their safe space. A problem appears, and, somehow, your name is attached to the solution.
This is a good thing. It feels like significance. But it can also be a negative thing, and I want us to explore some ways that it can become dangerous, particularly because being needed can look a lot like being loved.
Both make people come close. Both can make you feel important in someone’s life. Both can make your absence noticeable. But they are not the same thing. Being needed is not the same thing as being loved.
Need is often attached to what you can do. Love has to survive what happens when you cannot. That distinction has been troubling me.
Here’s the thing – if you spend enough of your life becoming useful, capable, dependable, resourceful, strong, available and responsible, you can build an entire identity around the experience of people requiring something from you. And somewhere along the way, you may stop asking a more frightening question: Would I still know how to receive love if I had nothing useful to offer today? No answer. No money. No solution. No strength. No impressive update. No rescue plan. Just me.
I think some of us become so accustomed to earning our place through contribution that receiving becomes uncomfortable. We know how to carry people, but we don’t always know how to let them carry us. We know how to provide value, but not always how to believe we have value before we provide it. And perhaps this issue reaches all the way into how we approach God. We bring Him our obedience, our work, our calling, our stewardship, our service, and our becoming. All worthy things.
But here’s THE thing… the real thing – you are loved by God before you can be useful to Him. Before the assignment, there is sonship. Before the fruit, there is belonging.
Again I ask – please pause and read that again. God loved you before.
Someone might ask: “Before what?” And my answer is before what comes after.
That’s the point of this journal: to tell you that God loved you before you were needed or capable. He loved you before, loves you now and loves you after. The greatest learning you and I must do is not to confuse the privilege of being needed with the miracle of being loved.
Because one day, there may be nothing for you to do, give, fix, provide, answer, restore, comfort, build, or any of that. And I want you to know that in Him you will still be valuable, home and loved.
So as you go about this week, be that for others.
One, Perfect Love.