Day 6 INTRODUCTION: We started a series of short posts about how the enemy proliferates our fleshly desires and causes our downfall. Identifying each trait and breaking them down into 7 parts to make it easier for you to understand and protect your loved ones from falling prey. Our intent is not to create fear or pass judgement on those with medical conditions but simply to state the truth as presented in the Holy Bible. We are passionate about your welfare, emotional, and physical wellbeing. We welcome your request for prayers, individually or in a group setting. God bless you and me.
UNLOVING DEFINITION: Without love, lacking affection or warm feeling, lacking in sympathy or feeling. Greek word for it is, Astorgos -- without natural affection.
One of the chief causes of lack of zest is the feeling that one is unloved, whereas conversely the feeling of being loved promotes zest more than anything else does.
A person may have the feeling of being unloved for a variety of reasons. They may consider themselves such as dreadful people that no one could possibly love; they may in childhood have had to accustom himself/herself to receiving less love than fell to the share of other children; or he/she may in fact be a person whom nobody loves. But in this latter event the cause probably lies in a lack of self-confidence due to early misfortune. The person who feels unloved may take various attitudes as a result.
THE FOUR LIES THAT RUINED HUMANITY
What do you think they are? Communism? Humanism? New-ageism (or a whole bunch more ism’s)? Evolution? In Genesis we find four lies bigger than all of these, and they came straight out of the mouth of Satan.
1. Now the serpent… said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
2. but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
3. Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
4. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)
The Father of All Liars
Out of these foundational lies all other lies were spawned—by the father of liars himself, the devil. Satan’s whole system is built on a lie. Jesus said in John 8:44,
“… He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him … he is a liar, and the father of it.”
His motive: murder. His method: the lie. Satan wants to bring death—physical, spiritual and eternal—and he does it through deception.
Satan isn’t interested in telling lies about little things. He wants you to believe lies about the biggest subject—God. If Satan can get your mind twisted about who God is and the trustworthiness of His character, then he has you.
Here in the first pages of history, Satan tells four big lies attacking God’s character. You meet them every day; they’re fresh and up to date.
Lie #1: God is not loving.
By planting that seed of doubt, Satan wanted Eve to believe God was withholding goodness from her; therefore, God Himself was not good. She would think God was cruel, harsh, and unloving.
Lie #2: God is not truthful.
By casting doubt on His truthfulness, Satan wanted Eve to believe God had lied to her. His question mark at the end of what God said implies God’s Word cannot be trusted.
Any person, be it teacher, professor, pundit or pastor, who causes skepticism about the authority, accuracy, infallibility, and authenticity of the Word of God is doing the work of Satan. Out to destroy God’s truthfulness, Satan introduced relativism, rationalism, pragmatism, post-modernism—all based on lies about God. Today’s society has been infected by these substitutes for the truth of God. The big daddy liar is behind them all.
Lie #3: God is not righteous.
With his “you shall not surely die” response, Satan wanted Eve to believe God would not really hold Eve’s sin against her. Some today think, “God is too good to punish sin.” He’s too good not to punish sin. He is holy and righteous.
Lie #4: God is not gracious.
Satan’s temptation here is for Eve to believe God’s plans for her were not good, and she should look out for herself. He tells Eve, “If God is not gracious, then you’d better become your own god and take care of yourself. Have your own way.”
But what is the truth about God’s desires for us?
GOD'S TRUE NATURE
Can you imagine serving a god that is unloving? Someone who is always looking out to find your faults and then blame all the things you did not do right? Many people think this is the true nature of our GOD. But the truth is so far from it.
God is not sometimes loving and sometimes unloving, today loving some people and hating others, and tomorrow hate those who were previously loved. In everything God does, always, in dealing with all people, God is a loving God.
"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." - 1 John 4:8
God warns us of Satan's devices and the ways he works by showing us in the Bible, and if we break the devil's tactics down into steps, you may see places in your life in the past or present where he's tried to worm his way in and take over. It was certainly a shock for me when I began to look at how Satan's lies are condemning our lives today.
To say that God is love does not mean that love is God. We do not discover what God is like by analyzing and then deifying our ideas and experiences of love. Such a God would be an idol. It is not our understanding of love that defines God but God’s action toward us that defines what real love is.
We have only to look at God’s self-revelation in biblical history and especially in Christ to see how radically different and how much better God’s love is than what often passes for love among us who call ourselves Christians. As I list the following Characteristics of the love of God, ask yourself these two questions: What would the church look like if its members loved each other as God loves us? How would such a church and its individual members speak and act in relation to people who follow other religious traditions or who do not believe in God at all?
1. God’s love is unconditional.
God does not say, "I will love you if you prove that you deserve my love and are worthy of it." Christ died for the ungodly, the zealots, the tax collector, the immoral, the social outcast and for you and I. There is no strings attached, to God’s love.
2. God’s love is initiating love.
It does not wait for people to come asking for love and acceptance. God makes the first move, loving before people ask for love or even acknowledge their need for it. Long before we seek and turn to God, God seeks us out and turns to us.(Luke 19:10)
3. God’s love is faithful.
God never takes back His promise to love us. Even when we are faithless, God remains faithful and true. We may turn away from God, but God never turns away from us. Even when God judges us for our sinfulness, God still loves us, for God’s love is "everlasting" (Jer. 31:3).
4. God’s love is reconciling love.
Jesus commanded us to love our enemies not just our friends. God loves those those who have made themselves enemies of Him by their sinful rebellion and their enmity toward their fellow human beings. Even when God confronts and judges our sinfulness, it is to heal rather than to hurt, restore rather than to defeat and destroy, reclaim rather than to get even and pay back. (II Cor. 5:19; Eph. 2:14).
5. God’s love is renewing love.
It forgives and accepts us as we are, no matter what we may have done or not done. But it also does not leave us as we are. God’s love is not a sentimental love that allows us passively to settle down in our sinfulness with the complacent attitude that God will forgive; that’s what he’s there for. It is love that sets us on our feet and sets us on the way toward becoming strong, active, responsible people growing up into the mature humanity we see in Jesus Christ.(Eph. 4:13).
6. God’s love is universal.
It seeks the welfare not just of a chosen few but of all people. It is not given to some and withheld form others; it is for everyone, for the whole world. There is no discrimination, limitation, or exclusiveness in God’s love.(John 3:16-17; I John 4:14; I Tim. 2:3-4).
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
He has our best interests in His heart if we will follow His plans.
PSYCHOLOGY: Unloved and Abandoned
Ego Psychology uses the term “Narcissism” to describe someone who is self-centered, and in love with their own image (as in the mythical Narcissus).
Narcissists grow up feeling unloved and abandoned. Without experiencing the mirroring of love from another, they lack the ability to love others, or even themselves.
Freud spoke of “primary narcissism” as a necessary stage of infant development. He theorized that before a child could love others, it must first learn to love itself.
A child devoid of love experiences intolerable painful feelings. In order to survive, they cut-off from these painful feelings and develop an idealized false-self mask that camouflage their suppressed inner feelings of being defective and unlovable.
Suspicious and fearful of their own disowned feelings, they then become suspicious of any displays of affection toward them. They interpret these displays of feelings by others as a sign of weakness. This weakness in others then becomes a tool for the narcissist to exploit and manipulate for self-gain.
While cut off from their true feelings, they fail to develop true empathy for others. As a result, any so called love relationship the narcissist develops lacks true warmth of affection for the other person; rather it is a relationship that is totally focused on the narcissist’s self-gain and self-worship.
Few are able to reach such heights; the great majority, both of men and women, if they feel themselves unloved, sink into a timid despair relieved only by occasional gleams of envy and malice. As a rule, the lives of such people become extremely self-centered, and the absence of affection gives them a sense of insecurity from which they instinctively seek to escape by allowing habit to dominate their lives utterly and completely.
For those who make themselves the slaves of unvarying routine are generally actuated by fear of a cold outer world, and by the feeling that they will not bump into it if they walk along the same paths that they have walked along on previous days.
Those who face life with a feeling of security are much happier than those who face it with a feeling of insecurity, at any rate so long as their sense of security does not lead them to disaster. And in a very great many cases, though not in all, a sense of security will itself help a man to escape dangers to which another would succumb.
If you are walking over a chasm on a narrow plank, you are much more likely to fall if you feel fear than if you do not.
And the same thing applies to the conduct of life. The fearless man may, of course, meet with sudden disaster, but it is likely that he will pass unscathed through many difficult situations in which a timid man would come to grief.
Before we turn to what the Bible teaches us about the justice of God, think again of what it teaches us about God’s love. In light of our discussion of it, could it be that instead of asking as we sometimes do whether God is really a loving God, we ought rather to ask first whether we Christians are really loving people?
God is calling each of us to love as He is loving us. The one living God is always truly loving and just for all. You can receive this love today. (I John 4:8)
Knowing God's TRUTH and ABIDING by it is the TRUE calling and PURPOSE for all believers. Friends, we offer fellowship to seek, gain, repent and share the WORD of GOD. Would you bow your head and pray with us?
Please stay tuned for the next part of this series that will cover: UNFORGIVING.
God bless you and your family. May you keep on guard and protect your heart and minds from the slick enemy who is always on the prowl to grab an unsuspecting soul. Please share your thoughts and views in the comment box below and share it with your family and friends. You can share your love and save someone from falling into a trap.
References and footnotes:
“Affection,” from The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell.
Peg Streep, author or coauthor of eleven books, received her B.A. in English with Highest Honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Magna Cum Laude inductee and a Phi Beta Kappa member. In 1971 she received her M.A. and M.Phil with Highest Honors in English from Columbia University.
Pastor Ken Smith - Turkey Baptist Church, Turkey North Carolina.
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