Motherhood has taught me about the love of God.
The love a mother or father has for a child is instant. It’s the only love you don’t choose. It simply exists because that child is yours. When I was expecting our first child, I was concerned that I wouldn’t even know how to love and care for another life in the way that motherhood would demand, but there hasn’t been a day when I have questioned the love I have for my kids. I have doubted if I was doing a good job as a mom, but there has never been a day that I have doubted my love for my kids. No matter what they have done or have left undone, my love for them has remained complete and full.
Motherhood has opened a window of understanding to the way God loves me. It has expanded my understanding about how God loves me unconditionally. Just like I love my kids simply because they are mine, so too, God loves each person He has created with an everlasting love. Our sin, our bad choices, our willful disobedience, while it breaks His heart, it doesn’t diminish His love for us. God hasn’t loved me any less at my worst, than He has loved me at my best.
Romans 5:8 says, But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When we were everything unlovable, when we disobeyed God, when we lived to please ourselves, when we ignored His warnings, when we distanced ourselves from God and His plans for our lives, when we disrespected and disregarded Him, when our actions and attitudes said, “I hate you, God,” He still loved us.
I John 4:8 says that God is love. It is His essence. It is His go-to. It is what He is always wanting to express. It motivates His action toward us. My kids have never had to earn my love. It is simply in my heart for them. It is what I want to convey to them. It is what I never want them to doubt. “I love you” is spoken often at our house and in our family group text. I want my kids to know beyond a doubt that I love them and that I always will. There is a security that comes from that reality. It is foundational to their identity to know that I love them.
The same is true for us as believers. It is foundational to our identity to know we are loved by God. The unconditional love of God shapes our identity. When we accept God’s love and become His children, we receive a love that leads us to a purposeful life. It gives us confidence to exercise faith because we know that even if we fail, we know that we know that we know that God has us. In those moments, failure then, simply becomes refining instead of defining. God’s love makes us better. It gives us the security we need to keep growing in our walk with Christ. I guess you could say that the love of God provides a safety net for us.
Not only has motherhood increased my understanding of God’s unconditional love, but it has helped me understand the sacrificial nature of God’s love. God loves us sacrificially. Loving parents make all kinds of sacrifices in order to nurture and protect their children. Moms, you know what I’m talking about when I say we first sacrifice our bodies for our kids. Any moms in the house who know what I’m talking about? I had such a tough time with both of my pregnancies I might liken it to a hostile takeover. I had no choice but to give in to their demands, and when I didn’t, there was a swift kick in the ribs to get me to comply! What I gave up in those two nine months stints, I have never recovered. It was a sacrifice for sure.
Parenting starts with sacrificing sleep so that babies can be properly cared for. Sometimes that lasts a long, long time. In those early years, parenting is literally all-consuming. Your time becomes devoted to feeding, clothing, teaching and assisting your kids. Parents take on extra jobs in order to provide for their kids. Having kids is expensive. In 2020 it was estimated that it costs $233,610 just to raise one child to the age of 17!
Parents spend more time in the car than they personally enjoy as they drive kids to and from their activities. They get up early to prep for the day and stay up late to make sure the laundry is done for the next day. They forgo personal activities to support their kids’ ambitions. You give up a tremendous amount of freedom in order to become a parent. Peace and quiet and privacy, as you know it, no longer exists. Every day is a “go the extra mile” day when you are a parent. It is a sacrifice…a great reward and joy for sure, but a sacrifice, nonetheless. Worth it, but a sacrifice.
God’s love for us is sacrificial. What I have done for my children pales in comparison to the way God has sacrificed Himself for me. He spared no expense as He gave His only Son, Jesus, the sinless righteous and only perfect One, to take my place on Calvary’s cross. An innocent, died in place of the guilty so that I could go free. You know those moments when you watch your kids struggle, when you suffer because they are hurting, when you would do anything to trade places with them, to take their punishment, to take their pain? Yeah, that’s what Jesus actually did on the cross. Motherhood, parenting, gives us a glimpse of the extremes that God has gone to in order to remove the guilt, shame and condemnation that sin produces and to remove the sting of death from us. Jesus literally traded places with us on the cross because He wanted to, because He could, so that we could have peace with God and eternal life in Heaven. He sacrificed His very life so that we could have life and life more abundant, John 10:10.
Not only has motherhood enabled me to have a clearer view of the unconditional love of God and the sacrificial love of God, but it also has helped me see that God loves me perfectly. Perfect love expresses whatever is truly needed and will be for someone’s benefit. That means that sometimes discipline is called for. I learned through the years of raising my children that sometimes, “No,” was the most loving word I could utter. I also learned that when learning and correction needed to take place, discipline was the most loving response I could offer.
I have loved my kids enough to not want them to continue in destructive behaviors. I have loved them enough to want to correct character flaws that would create problems with people down the road. Who they needed to become was more important than making them happy in the moment. In other words, I loved them too much to let them stay as they were.
Listen, if God didn’t love us, He wouldn’t discipline us. Hebrews 12:6 tells us the Lord disciplines those He loves. That is what makes His love perfect! He cares deeply about our quality of life. He doesn’t want us going off the rails, running amuck, having to deal with the consequences and relational heartache and personal ruin that come from stupidity and integrity issues that could be corrected immediately with some appropriate discipline. As hard as it was to spank our kids when they were little or to put them in time out when they got into elementary school or to ground them and take away their phone in the later years, it was the most loving thing we could do. We loved them enough to make sure they knew what acceptable behavior was. We loved them enough to make sure they knew there were expectations and a God-given standard by which we were training them to live. It’s the way God loves us.
I am so thankful that God doesn’t leave us as He finds us. I’m so glad that He doesn’t just love us in spite of our flaws and accept poor attitudes, bad behavior, disrespect and narcissistic and self-centered motives from us, letting us ruin our lives. He has better for us. He wants better for us. He wants us to enjoy life, and left to do our own thing, left to run our own lives, left to figure life out on our own, we won’t succeed. God wants what is best for us, and in order for us to experience that, we have to experience correction.
God loves us unconditionally, sacrificially and perfectly. Have you surrendered to His love?
