Perfect Love, not Punishment

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18

The first portion of this verse is heavily quoted, but today it was the second portion caught my attention. You see I had a realization this week: I pretty much think God is always displeased with me.

Let me preface this by saying that God’s recently been digging up some old heart wounds for the purpose of healing them. One of those wounds is that for me performance and love have always been tied together – you do well, you get love and if you don’t do well, you don’t. Unknowingly, I was filtering God’s love through this false understanding.

All this came up this week because someone sent me a praise report about some scarves. The prophetic words associated with them were spot on and the customer contacted me to let me know and also shared with me a word she was sensing for me which was that God was pleased with me.

After I finished reading I realized I couldn’t “feel” it at all. All I feel is impending punishment – just as this verse talks about. The original Greek word means “correction, punishment, penalty”. I always expected Him to criticize or rebuke, but it’s like my receiver for His love was turned off.

So many of us live in this place where we’re just waiting for God to say, “Ah ha! I’ve caught you!” followed by a spanking. I know firsthand that God’s true chastening is in love and brought in a way that brings healing, but even still because so much affection has been qualified by performance it’s hard for me to break that expectation.

Lord, I just pray for healing – both for myself and others who struggle with performace-based love. Help us to know deep down in our hearts that Your love is not conditional. It’s not based on performance – for You first loved us while we were still yet in our sins! Dirty, messy, rebellious, etc. And yet You loved us. You picked us. You wanted to keep us forever just because of who we were not because of anything we’d done – help us to know that. Lord I pray Your perfect love would cast out all fear. Perfect us in Your love. Be glorified in our hearts and lives. In Jesus’ name.