I’ve
“fallen for” many (wrong) guys in my short life. By God’s grace, I didn’t get
into a relationship with every guy I ever fell for. Unfortunately, most of the
time I didn’t receive that rejection for what it was – God protecting me from
people I didn’t need to be with and relationships that would have caused more
harm than good. I threw pity parties about not being wanted by person X or Y
who I was convinced I had to be with.
I saw many of these “crushes” as measures of my value, and when they didn’t
like me back I felt undesirable, boring, plain…the list goes on.
Likewise,
I’ve had a few bad friendships along the way that ended in betrayal and
rejection.
For
better and for worse, many
well-meaning women who’ve mentored me along the way have encouraged me to guard
my heart, which many times I interpreted: Don’t love too readily, too much, or
too soon.
It’s
only when I read an article that encouraged readers to “love, but guard your
heart,” that I realized this has been a prevailing message, and a misconception
that we have been feeding each other. This is a misinterpretation of the Bible
at best, and the very opposite of the gospel at worst.
When
I look at Jesus, and what He has done and continues to do for us, I cannot
interpret “guard your heart” as any of these common misinterpretations…
1. Don’t love too much.
Our
God tells us that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend (John 15: 13), that we should
be devoted to one another in love
(Romans 12:10), and that we should love our
neighbor (read: everyone) as ourselves (Mark 12: 31). God did not
withhold anything from us, not even His own son (Romans 8: 32).
Verses
aside, the whole story of the Bible repeatedly presents the image of our God
loving us with what I can only describe as reckless abandon. Jesus did not put
a limit to how much He would love us. As followers and imitators of Jesus, why would we cap our love for those around us?
2. Don’t love just anyone; people have to earn your love.
God
does not love us because we deserve it. If we take a long honest look at our
hearts, and more importantly the Word, we find that God owes us nothing. Yet He
loves us. A LOT. Jesus loved us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8), and God
continued to love and lead the Israelites, David, and the early Christians despite
some things that would be deal-breakers for most of us; unfaithfulness,
adultery, mistrust, betrayal/public rejection…
Again,
if we are seeking to be “doers of the Word, and not hearers only” then our
desire should be to love people well even
when they don’t deserve our love, and
even if they are sinful (*like us*). Albeit unnatural, our mandate to be
holy as He is holy includes unconditional love for those around us. So let’s
press on toward this end, in the hope that “they may know us by our love” whether
it’s deserved or undeserved.
3. Keep a barrier up and only trust a
handful
Nobody’s
ever told me to build a wall around my heart yet much of the counsel we receive
as young women today amounts to that. What’s worse is that our own experiences
and inclinations support this notion of being defensive in many if not all our
relationships. Building off the last two points, I don’t think we can love
effectively and wholeheartedly if we will not engage those around us on a heart
level. If you have had a committed relationship with anyone (parent, friend,
significant other…) you know that loving people gets messy. Sometimes it just
hurts.
Although
every relationship must have some level of trust, we must also remember that it
is better to put our trust in God than in man (Psalm 118: 8). This doesn’t mean
we trust no-one. It means although we have a healthy trust for our loved ones,
God is the only one we fully depend on in all things. So whereas the world will
tell us to trust no-one or a few people and depend on ourselves, the gospel
tells us to fully trust in God because He is trustworthy by nature. Therefore
we can love those around us to the fullest, and not worry about defensiveness
because God’s got our backs.
So what does it mean when the Word
tells us to “guard our hearts”?
Well,
context might help a little:
“Above
all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” ~ Prov 4:23
I
propose that this verse has nothing to do with whether we love people or how we
love them, and everything to do with what we take in and what we allow to
influence us. The reason I experienced emotional dips after being “rejected”
isn’t that I loved those people too much; it’s that I put my worth in how they
felt about me. I let their behavior towards me influence how I felt about
myself. I valued their thoughts of me so much that I let them override
everything God says I am in His Word. In other words, my problem was idolatry.
When
we communicate that people love too much, we create a society of people who
love defensively long after the source of their pain is gone; people who refuse
to love vulnerably and engage each other in meaningful relationships. L
I
hope we’ll take a few notes from Jesus and change how we handle love, crushes,
and “guarding our hearts”
With
Love,
Wadzie
