Ownership part 2
Man... we really don't seem to understand love at all sometimes. We seem to think, "I love you, and that means I control you. I own you." When, in truth, the exact opposite is true. Christ's love controls us! We don't own love, love owns us! Look at 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 in the NLT, "Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you wiht a high price. So you must honor God with your body." If I'm not MY owner, how could I be anybody elses? And that's the key to "love without ownership." Understanding who owns ME (the God who IS love, and the God who is my heavenly Father) and understanding that I don't own anybody (or anything). We are stewards, but we are not owners. 1 Timothy 6:7 puts it like this, "For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." See, we're so afraid to lose what we've got--what we THINK we've got--that we miss out on what's available to us. We hang on to the scraps and we miss out on the abundance. We try to keep our lives, and end up losing them. To paraphrase Princess Leia from Star Wars, the more you tighten your grip, the more it slips through your fingers. I'm telling you, love isn't about control. It's about freedom. It's about liberty. It's not about loving someone so much that you want to change them... it's about loving someone so much that you don't NEED to change them. We can't change people. We couldn't even change ourselves. That's why Jesus came, at the appointed time of the cross, and did the work we couldn't do. We thought that following the Law of Moses would allow us to "be like Jesus." When the truth is, we were already like Him. On the cross, Jesus showed us who He really us--showed us who GOD really is--and showed us who WE really are. He CONFORMED us to His image. We were already made in His image, but we didn't know what the image was. Not until Jesus--the light of the world--shined in our hearts and revealed the truth to us. And what He revealed to us... is that we belong to Him. We're His. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. We don't own love, and we don't use love to own each other. Love owns us. We were bought with a price and we are not our own. We belong to Him. And when we understand that glorious truth, we can love without ownership. Without expectation. Without needing anything from those we are loving. Because when we know who we belong to--when we know that we ARE loved with an eternal, unconditional, unstoppable, never ending love--then we know that we have everything we need. And when we know that we have everything we need (in that stewardship role), we can be good stewards and we can share what we have!