How to recover when your giving has become someone else’s taking.
Love gives. We all give. Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But what happens when our giving has become involuntary and is expected or even taken from us?
What are we giving?
When we give, we are laying down our life, which is the soul part of me. The me who is connected to this life. No matter what I am giving, it is being given in my time, my hopes, my desires for myself, for someone else. That’s why Jesus called it “Laying down our life for a friend.” John 15:14
Jesus shared that this choice was out of His sonship with the Father that enabled Him to lay it down and to take His life (himself/soul) back up again. Therefore, My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. John 10:17
Time to take back our life.
Giving becomes taking when we can no longer afford to give, nor are given the choice to give. It’s expected of us. We feel the taking. It’s not that others should know. It’s ours to know when we have given our life beyond our ability to give. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father. John 10:18
Me Time is God time.
When we are experiencing the burn out, the abuse of our generosity, now under compulsion, it’s time to take time for ourselves. But taking time for me may or may not answer the problem of someone else taking my life. I have found that Jesus did not take His life back to himself but to the Father. “This command I have received from My Father.” Funny as it may sound, when we discover ourselves being taken from, the first thing we must do is return our life to the Father.
Our life is in the Son.
Giving back our life (our time to God our Father, in the Son) returns our soul to safety and peace. Returning to our Father in prayer, accepting what He has given us in the Son, we move from victims into Christ triumphant, even before anything else has changed. Here we can again, under Christ’s authority, receive His love, His grace, His ability, His joy, and peace. Here we receive the new command concerning the moment of service we are in and can begin again new.
Now it’s time to give again.
Practicing our “Me time” with God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is the maturity of the church. Growing up into Him (Christ) the head and serving one another with the ability that God gives.
Wednesday June 14th – Love Feast – 5:00 pm in the Café: We are in our Summer Love Feasts, followed by ministry in the sanctuary from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm each week. Glory of God’s Love to behold, receive, and give away is our ministry focus, inside stations of prayer and power.
