In Episode 1 of TEMPLATES, we detail God’s approach towards sharing His love with us. Through His example, we see that love has a purpose and process that affirms both the giver and the receiver.
Your actions are consistent but your reactions are not always the same.
They are not always the same because you do take nuance and intricacy into account. You are not a machine. You are alive with love and with feeling that grows and adjusts to our needs. You are not a God of blanket, round-peg in a square-hole, ram-it-in by brute force and will kind of love. You are better than that. You have to be better than that.
You are capable of feeling just like us but you are principled. Your ways are made known, as are your expectations. You love endlessly but this love is not aimless. It is directed at everyone but it is not misappropriated. You love pointedly but no one is prejudiced against. If anything, by choice and lifestyle, we prejudice ourselves against your love.
All can get to know and feel it but not all will. This is not a stain on your incorruptible love.
No one gets to have their way with your love, running roughshod over it and taking it for granted. You value loyalty and truth too much for a blind eye to be turned to feigned devotion.
Your love has endless and forever-undeniable value even in a vacuum, even though it is not intended for a vacuum. Your love, in order to effect its full work, requires a willingness to be loved and a step of faith in the right direction.
Your love is not a badge you wear to announce your superiority over and above everyone else; even though you could and would rightly be justified in doing so. Your love has a point. It is not an obligation that applies indiscriminately to all. It is simply not an obligation. It is a choice. A choice hinging on staying true to who you are. You love because it is in your nature – because it is who you are. It is the essence of you. You are love and love is you.
You are neither a slave to anything or anyone, nor are you a slave to yourself. You are unbridledly free to love, to love first and to love always. Yet, you are principled and dogged about who can get to feel the benefits of that love.
There is a sacred, promised place for those who believe; those whose beliefs are not just mere words. There is a sacred, promised place for those who love you too as you have shown them to.
The context behind this template:
I was going through a period in my life where I’d started to feel like some of the people closest to me valued me for the wrong reasons. Where I wanted relationship, they wanted what seemed to me like their own sole gain. I badly wanted to belong and to feel a part of something, till I began realizing that what I aimed to belong in was at odds with who I wanted to be. It took me some months but God opened my eyes to see some of the context of His love. It has also taken me time, required courage and brave effort, but I am actively choosing to use this context as the definition of my life, my Christian walk and my love.
That Christian Next Door 
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