Today I’d like for you to consider with me the most core foundational personal wellness question: How are you progressing in learning to love well? Well can mean thoroughly and completely. It can mean a place from which we draw something out, like water. It can also refer to every facet of our health; physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, and financial.
So let me ask you again, are you learning to LOVE WELL? Thoroughly? Completely? Are you being filled up so it can be drawn out of you? Is it impacting every facet of your health?
Maybe you have no idea but are curious how you could begin to measure that!
Bernard of Clairvaux, a twelfth-century French abbot, wrote in his book On Loving God that there are four degrees of love through which people can naturally progress. Pastor and author Pete Scazzero has used these degrees to define the stages of emotional health as an emotional infant, child, adolescent, or adult.
The first degree of love is loving yourself for your own sake. This is emotional infancy. Ponder with me an infant for a moment.
In their world, and for those stuck at this first degree of love, everything is focused upon them; their wants, their needs, their urgencies. I’d say “their thoughts” but I’m not sure there is much thought here. This stage of love is more primal, reactive and self-focused. “Me, me, me.” And it’s necessary if you’re a physical infant. But it is highly dysfunctional if you have progressed to adulthood chronologically speaking, yet are stuck here emotionally.
Progressing out of the first degree of love and toward the second we do begin to think beyond ourselves. But… barely.
Clairvaux says that at the second degree we begin to love God for our own blessing. “So, if I do this ‘Christian’ thing, what’s in it for me?” While we are considering something beyond ourselves, it is still really about us. Stasi Eldredge says in her book, Defiant Joy, “The church has been forced to present itself as a place you can get your needs met for the simple reason that most Christians are stuck at the second degree of love.” Folks, this is quintessential “self-help.” This is an emotional child and sadly many of us never get past this degree of love. Like an infant having needs met, self-help also serves a necessary purpose, but we are made for so much more!
The third degree of love is loving God for God's own sake. At this stage, we come to love God for who He is, not for what we can get from Him. This is relational. I can see beyond myself and my needs and simply consider another outside of myself as having independent thoughts, desires, and personality. This is an emotional adolescent; having a sense of autonomous others. And we may even begin to edge into the truth that “In God’s presence there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11).” Now, this scripture is actually telling us that as God is looking at us, as His face is turned in our direction, we experience His joy and delight in us. WHAT?! That is how God really, truly feels about ME? I’m not a burden, a mistake, or a mess up? I’m… a delight? Yes, this is a life changing new reality and of course it takes some time for it to settle into our being as Truth.
I think you can see that this is the stage where I think things really begin to get exciting! It is also then within this stage we can begin to truly understand friendship, team work, partnering together… and God DESIRES these things with us! In fact, at this stage we become aware that He is inviting us to become CO-CONSPIRATORS in His mission here on earth. Our union with the Father is made more complete and we become emboldened to genuinely pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In me. Through me.
Yet, this is still only the third stage! Some of you may have never thought about this before and may even be thinking, “what more is there?” I’m so glad you asked and I so hope you are ready to consider and maybe even “try on” what more there could be in learning to love WELL.
Clairvaux believed there was also a fourth degree of love: loving ourselves for God's sake. This isn’t a return to emotional infancy; it is a movement into emotional adulthood. It is becoming capable because of the connection and understanding I have developed in stage three about the Father’s love for me, to begin to see myself as He sees me; with joy. With mutual delight. When God looks at you, He sees the you He originally designed before any sin happened; by you or to you. We become increasingly aware of His invitations to remove our coping and survival mechanisms that have resulted from the impacts of sin upon our lives. To trust Him more fully and to participate in returning to His original design for us.
We learn to have compassion for ourselves. And in learning to have compassion for ourselves we begin to naturally progress into what might even be considered a fifth degree of love, if we really wanted to split hairs, and that would be loving OTHERS for God’s sake. The Bible says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Knowing, even experiencing, God’s life-changing love for you creates a natural overflow of compassionate love for others.
Especially the others who have most hurt you in life. I have compassion. I forgive. And I trust God to reveal to me where my healthy boundaries should be with this person moving forward. I understand the universal impacts of sin. No one escapes unscathed. But all are loved by my Heavenly Father & I am called to be fully saturated with joy in His presence, like a rock soaking up all the heat from the sun, and then I reflect Him onto those around me.
I am healed in this process, I become contaminated by the Truth of the cross, the depth of His self-sacrificial love for me. I am in effect, “cross-contaminated.” And now? Well, God calls me to infect those around me with His love, each and every day because my love for them has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the loving WELL my source that is full to overflowing.
And this is how we can participate with Heavenly Father in changing the world!
But it begins with your commitment to learning to love well. A great place to begin is by taking the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Assessment here: https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/EHD-Personal-Assessment-2021.pdf
Then, request the Stepping Into Wellness materials here: https://getoiling.com/RachaelPage/landing/stepping-into-wellness and continue in returning to all God originally designed for you to be. You are so needed in His Kingdom.
There’s nothing like having company on the journey of learning to love well. Join the waitlist by commenting WAITLIST for next Stepping Into Wellness growth group.
Wellness Blessings,
Rachael
Until next time, may you be blessed in all your divine wellness pursuits, friend!
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