unconditional.

“Do you believe that I love you with an unconditional love?” God asks me.

“Well I thought that I did…” is usually my response.

Once again, the Lord is peeling back yet another layer of my hard, stubborn heart to show me how works based my faith has become. He began this process over a year ago, yet every huge transition in my life has centered around this question in my heart of unconditional love. A love with no conditions? With nothing I can do or say to change this love? Nothing can be done to make it decrease and nothing can be done to make it increase? A love so full of grace and truth that it almost seems unbelievable?

Not everyone has found this Love. But I believe it is the core of what every heart longs for.

And so, when all the frills of college faded away…when everything that I had built my life around suddenly no longer existed in my world…I was left exposed. And what was exposed was not pretty.

A heart that had poured out every last drop for other people because it did not believe it was worth being poured into.

A soul that was stretched to the limit in ministry therefore could not hear the whispers of love from Someone else.

A mind that knew many things about this Love on a head level but would not let it reach heart level.

And so He began to peel. And peel. And peel. I imagine my heart as this thing…unrecognizable, battered, bruised, hardened. And slowly the Lord put different circumstances in my life to remove each layer…slowly and painfully, yes. But carefully and lovingly as well.

And so He begins to peel another layer away. This layer that seeks perfection and superiority. This layer that does not understand how to extend grace, inwardly or outwardly. This layer that is this antithesis of the Gospel.

The deeper He goes into the layers the more wretched I realize my heart is. And just when I think I understand God’s love, He puts me in a different situation where I am wrecked again. On and on the cycle goes.

But it is a beautiful cycle. It is one that I could not live without. Because with each disgusting layer of my heart being peeled away, I have a new understanding of how deep and wide and long and high this Love for me goes.

And so now, I am learning again. Learning a deeper sense of what being centered and grounded in Christ looks like. And I hope I never stop learning. I hope He never stops peeling back these layers of my heart.

And I am confident He won’t - because Jesus never stops chasing His bride.

“Do you believe I love you with an unconditional love?” God asks me.

“Teach me how to believe.”