Love has no expectations

    To anyone who reads my blog... God is good. He is SO good. The more hurt and broken I become the more I am able to rejoice because my Lord cares for me.
    Yesterday I was sitting in church, and my pastor introduced the most novel and applicable concept. He began by asking who in the congregation had had the trust of a close friend broken, or had been lied to, or had had a promise broken. Then he asked who, as a result of this, had clammed up and refused to make themselves vulnerable as a result. I contemplated how I had begun to do this or at least desired to do this. And then he said "Love requires vulnerability. We may think we can love one another and keep our hearts "safe" within us, but we can't." I can't even express how much my mind was enlightened at that moment.
   What was more significant was what he said after that: "Love has no expectations." Basically when we love someone (and by doing this make ourselves vulnerable,) we need to EXPECT that person to break our trust, to break their promises, to lie to us, and to hurt us. The only person we can trust fully and know that he wont do those things, is God. We can't have expectations of perfection for brothers and sisters in Christ. If you hold expectations for people, they WILL fail to meet them. And if you judge them for that, you are at fault because you never should have expected them to meet YOUR expectations.
    I am not condoning lying, breaking of promises, unkind words, etc. But I am saying, you are in no position to judge them for being human, which you are too. And if you claim to be loving towards them, then you had better not hold expectations of them because you will end up disappointed.
    The wonderful thing is that if we trust in God first and foremost, we wont rely on people and it wont hurt nearly as much when they let us down. We can rest in the truth that God will never let us down or fail to meet expectations based on His Word.
    So I am telling you to go and love people. Open up and make yourself vulnerable, and expect them to hurt you, let you down, break your heart, lie to you, and not keep promises. But love them just the same because that is how Christ loves us.

~Melody