In classes/seminars I’ve taught over a number of years I have asked hundreds of people how many feel that they would like more love in their life. In response, most hands are raised. But when I ask how they can get more love, almost all answer, “By giving love.”

Sounds reasonable and works wonderfully well as long as we feel loved. The fact remains, however, that we cannot give what we haven’t got. In other words I can only give love to the degree that I have been and feel loved.

In my experience I don’t think there are many principles I find so simple and yet so profound in its effect—and so difficult for people to grasp—than teaching how to grow in love so that they will feel loved and have more love to give.

Here’s the principle: We love God because he first loved us. We love people exactly the same way—by someone first loving us!

Love is a lesson to be learned. We don’t come into the world knowing how to love—only with the capacity to learn love. If we grow up and live with love, we will learn how to love and become loving. If we don’t, we won’t. That is, if we don’t grow up in a loving home atmosphere, we won’t learn to feel loved or how to love. We become what we grow up with.

If we grew up with less than adequate love, we need to get it now. So how do we do this? As we said yesterday, we can only feel loved to the degree that we are known. In other words, to fully love we need to be fully known for who we truly are. That’s the scary thing that makes it so difficult for people to grasp.

I fear that if you know who I truly am with all of my fears, faults, and failures, you won’t like me, let alone love me. However, if I am with safe, loving people the exact opposite is true. The easiest people in the world to love are people who are real—who are honest—people who are not hiding behind a false mask pretending to be something or someone they are not.

In other words, I learn love by being with safe people; that is, non-judgmental, non-advice-giving, and non-trying-to-fix-me people. If you are a safe, trustworthy person, as I allow you to see my fears, failures and faults and you don’t judge me, tell me what I should or shouldn’t feel, be or do, but accept and love me as I truly am, little by little I learn to love and accept myself in exactly the same way. That reprogramming of the mind doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and persistence. Try as I might there is no other way to grow in love. There is no simple, quick-fix solution.

For the healing of persons, which includes healing in love, the Bible teaches us to confess our sins and faults to one another, to pray for one another so that we may be healed!² But don’t ever confess your sins and faults to unsafe people. If you do, you will only feel more rejection.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be open, honest and real with myself and with you, and to find at least one loving safe person with whom I can be totally open, honest and real and confess my fears, faults, failures and sins … and in so doing experience healing—and thereby learn to love and accept myself as you love and accept me. And then make me a loving channel through whom your love can flow to every life I touch. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 John 4:18-19 (NIV).

2. James 5:16.

A popular song from back in the ’60s or ’70s by Burt Bacharach was: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love / It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of / What the world needs now is love, sweet love / No not just for some but for everyone.”

Only those embittered and disillusioned by failure in love would disagree with those words. We were created for loving relationship, without which we limp along in the shadows of life eking out a lonely existence. And even while living with others such people may live together alone apart—and die a little every day.

It may not be most desirable, but we can live without romantic relationships, but we cannot live healthily nor can we get our love needs met without being in at least one—and hopefully—several healthy relationships.

Furthermore, we can only love and be loved to the degree that we are known. As long as I hide behind a false mask, no matter how attractive and likable that mask may be, I will never feel loved, because my mask is not me. That’s the person I’m pretending to be. Only real people find real love. What is more, only real people can experience a real relationship with God. I simply cannot feel close to God or anybody else as long as I hide behind a false mask.

Moreover, as Sydney Jourard wrote some years ago in his book, The Transparent Self, “Every maladjusted person is someone who has not made himself known to another human being and in consequence he does not know himself. Nor can he be himself. More than that, he struggles actively to avoid becoming known by another human being. He works ceaselessly at it day and night. And it is work!”

So to be healthy physically, emotionally and spiritually—and to find loving relationships—we need to come out of hiding and be real.

So how do we do this?

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be honest and real with myself and with you so that I will know and experience feeling close to you and learn how to find and experience loving relationships. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 145:18 (NIV).

Imagine living in a world without feelings? As someone noted in Reader‘s Digest some years ago, “Life without feelings would be like playing a trombone with a stuck slide”—incredibly dull and boring.

In a Daily Encounter when I talked about the need for effective communications at the feeling level for intimacy and stated that feelings, in and of themselves, are neither right nor wrong, one reader shared his thoughts as follows:

“I have read your column for as long as it has existed. I am a huge fan. But your column today was the first time I saw something that doesn’t make any sense. You said, ‘Feelings in and of themselves are neither right nor wrong.’ Sure they are. The psychopathic killer that gets upset by the slightest provocation and becomes enraged, certainly his feelings are wildly disproportionate to the slight, and leads to his killing someone.”

In my response I stated that feelings are feelings—and not actions. Feelings are an indication of what is going on in one’s inner self—often from the unconscious mind. They are an “emotional thermometer” as it were indicating the state of one’s inner self. The important thing is to learn how to discern what our feelings are telling us and then act appropriately.

For instance, if I have continuing feelings of anger, this is an indication that I probably have an unresolved relational conflict that I need to resolve. Or if I have ongoing feelings of guilt, this is an indication that I need to put something right and seek forgiveness. Think too of temptation. It starts in the mind. The thoughts and feelings associated with the temptation are neither right nor wrong. It’s what we do about them—or in response to them—that makes them either right or wrong.

The feelings of the psychopathic killer you talk about—among other things—undoubtedly has a major problem with unresolved anger/hostility. It was his failure (or inability because of his mental illness) to resolve his hostility, which led him to act out his feelings by killing someone, which was tragically wrong.

Recall that the Bible says, “Be angry, and do not sin.” It’s what we do about our anger that becomes either right or wrong—creative, or destructive and sinful. Remember, too, that what negative feelings we don’t talk out creatively, we will inevitably act out destructively.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to discern the source of any and all negative feelings and, when they are indicating that something in my life needs facing and resolving, help me to see the reality of this, and get the help I need to resolve them so I won’t act them out in destructive and sinful ways. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Ephesians 4:26-27 (NKJV).

William James, the father of American psychology, stated that, “the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind [your thinking].” He also said, “If you change your mind, you can change your life.”

While what William James said is true, this truth wasn’t discovered by his generation. Two thousand years ago God’s word pointed out the importance of right thinking.

It is true; we can change our lives by changing our thinking—either for good or bad. If we harbor and dwell on negative thoughts, we will act in negative ways. On the other hand, if we harbor and dwell on positive thoughts, we will act in positive ways. What we think about comes about.

As another has said, “What the mind dwells on the body acts on.” Think of temptation for instance. First comes a thought and, if we entertain it, it hooks our feelings, and the stronger we feel about it, the more we keep thinking about it, and the more we rationalize about doing it … and unless we nip that thinking in the bud, we give in to the temptation and act it out.

So as an unknown author also wisely said:

Watch your thoughts; they lead to attitudes.

Watch your attitudes; they lead to words.

Watch your words; they lead to actions.

Watch your actions; they lead to habits.

Watch your habits; they form your character.

Watch your character; it determines your destiny.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for your Word that admonishes me to guard my thinking. Please help me to discipline my thought life and learn to dwell on ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, and whatever is excellent or praiseworthy.’ Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Philippians 4:8 (NIV).