If you asked most people who Norma Jeane Mortenson was, they probably wouldn’t know. Yet nearly everyone in America has heard of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn’s real name was Norma Jeane Mortenson. Her mother was a film cutter at RKO Studios who, abandoned by her husband, spent most of her life in and out of mental institutions. As a result, Marilyn spent a large portion of her childhood abused and alone, trapped inside the foster care system.
Battered but not broken, Marilyn quickly worked her way to superstardom. By the time she hit her early thirties, Marilyn had become one of the most desired women in all of Hollywood; however, this was short-lived.
Marilyn wrote, “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”1 Her words are sobering and reveal a dark side to our performance-driven society that creates its heroes from the outside in.
Maybe this is the reason why most of us spend so long getting ready for each day. We shower, fix our hair, brush our teeth, and do the best we can to look beautiful on the outside, yet we rarely give any thought to enhancing the souls within us. The fixation we have with impressing one another has led to the adage, “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone.” When external beauty is a manifestation of the healthy soul that lies within you, it feels authentic, real, and attractive. But when the soul within you is drowning, starving, ignored, and unkempt, everything you do on the outside is futile. Such was the case with Marilyn.
Marilyn never quite made it out of the hell into which she was born. Rich, and yet miserable, she overdosed on barbiturates at just thirty-six years old; this was the heartbreaking tragedy of living as Marilyn Monroe on the outside when all the while Norma Jeane remained within.
WHEN EXTERNAL BEAUTY IS A MANIFESTATION OF THE HEALTHY SOUL THAT LIES WITHIN YOU, IT FEELS AUTHENTIC, REAL, AND ATTRACTIVE.
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned crowds of listeners about this type of living. He used the word hypocrite, which comes from the Greek word hypokrite, meaning “stage actors” (Matthew 6:5, 16). He compared scribes and Pharisees to clean-looking cups filled with selfishness and to clean, beautiful tombs full of unclean, dead bones (Matthew 23:25–27); He compared false prophets to ravenous wolves dressed up as sheep (Matthew 7:15).
We see these words in the Bible and want to distance ourselves from scribes, Pharisees, and false prophets, but the worrisome truth is that this same problem infects our lives, too, in ways we may not clearly see. Many self-help books today are more like acting lessons that teach people how to behave in the big-screen movie of life; but if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll see that the training they impart is just spray paint and stenciling for anyone hoping to become like Captain America. It rarely ends well.
It’s incumbent upon us to ask the question, why do we pretend? I think it’s because we are all born with an intense need to feel significant, loved, valued, and accepted; yet we fear that we are not worthy of these things. So we pretend to be the people we think society wants us to be in order to meet the desperate needs of our souls.
Let me be clear: these are not just wants or desires; these are God-given needs. What water, food, air, sleep, and sunlight are to your body; love, acceptance, attention, approval, and significance are to your soul.
Sadly, most believers don’t even acknowledge, much less manage, these needs because they were actually taught by their pastors to ignore their souls! In fact, in many circles the soul is thought of as something inherently evil. In other words, some people teach that to be truly spiritual you must suppress or ignore the needs of your soul and instead focus only on spiritual things.
If a person is drowning in a pool, nobody stands by and says, “You need air, you airless person! If you would just read your Bible more often, you wouldn’t need air!” We all know that no matter how spiritual somebody is, he or she still needs air. You can go to church every day, read your Bible consistently, and pray all the time, but none of these things will fulfill the need you have for oxygen.
John struck at the heart of this issue when he wrote to encourage his friend and follower Gaius, “Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2). Did you notice that prosperity and health are directly related to your soul and not your spirit? Sunday after Sunday, all around the world, people are taught how to become more spiritual, but we never teach them how to manage their souls. But if all prosperity and health are directly related to our souls, and only indirectly related to our spirits, it’s imperative that we first acknowledge and then manage the needs of our souls. Otherwise, we will find ourselves drowning in the sea of humanity, starving for love, affection, acceptance, significance, attention, and approval.
Tridimensional Wholeness
Acts 3 tells the story of Peter and John going to the temple at 3:00 p.m. to pray. There was a man there who had been born lame, and he was begging for money. Peter basically said, “We don’t have money because we are ministers, but what we do have we will gladly give to you. In the name of Jesus, walk!” Then Peter grabbed the guy by the hand and lifted him up.
Suddenly the guy jumped up and started walking, leaping, and praising God. In other words, he was healed physically (walking), he was healed emotionally (leaping: a physical manifestation of excitement or joy), and he was healed spiritually (praising God)! It’s a beautiful demonstration of the tridimensional nature of God, because God heals the whole man (Acts 3:1–8).
The next verses, though, are quite disheartening. They read, “All the people saw him walking and praising God; . . . and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him” (3:9–10, emphasis added). Did you catch that huge omission? The guy leaped, but the people only noticed his walking and praising! I mean, the man had a tridimensional encounter with Jesus, yet the cultural value system blinded these people to a massive portion of the guy’s miracle. He was emotionally healed, and nobody caught it. The soul was lost in the shuffle as it so often is, even today.
What Went Wrong
One of the major reasons we devalue the soul is a misunderstanding of a single passage in the book of Hebrews. It reads, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
At first glance the verse seems to be saying the Lord wants to separate the soul from the spirit, the spirit being good and the soul being evil.
Harold Eberle helped to clear this up for me. Harold is a Greek scholar who says that a more accurate rendering of the original text would read: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword, and piercing as far as the division between soul and soul, and spirit and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”2
In other words, instead of the sword dividing between the soul and the spirit, the sword is actually dividing the soul from the soul and the spirit from the spirit. What does this mean, you ask? It’s a beautiful picture of sanctification in which God uses His Word (depicted as a sword) to separate what shouldn’t be in your soul from what should be and what shouldn’t be in your spirit from what should be. God’s sword is so sharp He can cut out every single cell that shouldn’t be in your soul and remove every single cell that shouldn’t be in your spirit, all without harming one divinely placed cell in your being!
Soul Needs
We must learn to care for our soul needs if we ever hope to cultivate Kingdom virtues that empower us to walk in our high callings. When the body of Christ devalues the soul and declares it irrelevant or, worse yet, believes it’s evil, then the needs of the soul are never proactively met. This creates a soul desert where people passionately pursue mirages, illusions emerging out of the dry heat of an affectionless community.
Mirages are not the result of someone’s willful actions; instead they are the unhealthy side effects of dehydration. I love this addage: “A full man dislikes honey, but to a famished man any bitter thing is sweet” (Proverbs 27:7, paraphrase mine).
Soul-desert cultures use certain phrases to condemn the manifestations of their people’s soul needs, effectively communicating the conviction that the needs of the inner man are to be ignored, or even denied. Here are a few of the most common ones: “That person is in the flesh!” “They just want attention!” “They’re just trying to get people to like them!” “They just need to feel like they’re important!” “That person is so clingy!”
Yes, that person is in the flesh, but even Jesus was the Word that became flesh and dwelled among us (John 1:1, 14). And the apostle Paul said, “Husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–29).
“Kris,” you ask, “are you saying that I am supposed to feed and value my flesh?”
No, the apostle Paul said that! I’m simply repeating what the Bible says. You should take care of the needs of your natural man, because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, your soul was created in the image of God, and it also requires intentional care. Can you say, “paradigm shift”?
Soul Power
David, the man after God’s own heart, was extraordinarily in touch with the needs of his soul, and consequently his soul loved God. Look at the way David talked to his soul:
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
(PSALM 42:5)
David wrote this after he escaped from Abimelech:
My soul will make its boast in the LORD;
The humble will hear it and rejoice.
(PSALM 34:2)
After a time of deep distress, David’s soul was bragging about the Lord!
Even when he is wandering in a literal desert, David has soulish ways:
O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
(PSALM 63:1)
Did you catch that? David’s soul hungered for God, and the guy wasn’t even born again! There are hundreds of references to the soul of David loving on God.
Of course the most famous soul quote is in Psalm 23, and yet we often miss the best verse in this passage. David proclaimed, “[The Lord] restores my soul” (v. 3). Yes! This is just like the story of the man at the temple gate. You know the guy: the lame man who leaped. This is it. This is what we all need! We need to be whole on the inside, so we can be real on the outside. No more pretenders. No more Captain America wannabes. No more stage actors!
Check out what Moses heard, straight from the mouth of God. The Lord said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5, emphasis added). There it is again, but this time it is God exhorting His people to have a tridimensional relationship with Him. It’s simple and yet profound, isn’t it? Love God with all your heart (the Old Testament word for spirit), with all your soul, and with all your might (body).
We should all have a tridimensional plan for our tridimensional beings, so that we can walk, leap, and praise God. It’s only through a healthy, whole being that the Kingdom can be accurately expressed to the world around you. In the process you will become a fully actualized, completely alive child of the King.
I won’t cover too much of the “walking” and “praising God” dimensions of your being in this book. It certainly is important to take care of your body and to live a physically healthy life, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this book for two reasons: (1) there are hundreds of books written on the subject, and (2) there are people who are far more qualified than I am to address these essential topics.
IT’S ONLY THROUGH A HEALTHY, WHOLE BEING THAT THE KINGDOM CAN BE ACCURATELY EXPRESSED TO THE WORLD AROUND YOU.
Neither will I dive too deeply into the spiritual side of life, at least not in the traditional way it’s been taught in churches. I have written four other books dealing with the subject of growing your spirit man and embracing the power of the spirit.3 In the following pages, however, we will dig deeper into what it means to “leap” . . . to love and care for your soul. Let’s begin by discussing the various ways you can meet the needs of your soul.
Three Ways to Live
There are three main ways we tend to approach meeting the needs of our souls: inactively, reactively, or proactively.
You are inactive when you remain ignorant of the condition of your soul. In the inactive mind-set you embrace your desperate need as an unwanted yet necessary part of life’s process. Then you work hard to convince yourself that love, acceptance, attention, approval, and significance are not necessities but choices that can be opted out of. Maybe you don’t try to meet the needs of your soul because you want to be spiritual, so you wear your dysfunction as a badge of honor. Or worse yet, you bury your needs so deep that you can’t consciously remember where you even put them. Life just happens to you when you live inactively. Eventually, you find your soul existing in brokenness, emptiness, and loneliness.
You are reactive when you acknowledge your soul’s needs but then fulfill the needs in dysfunctional ways. This is the proverbial “looking for love in all the wrong places” scenario. Living reactively often leads to all kinds of extremely dysfunctional devices that never fulfill your need to be known deeply or your desire to be loved for who you are. The fruit of this reactive lifestyle may be sexual promiscuity, pornography, fantasy, selfish ambition, and so on . . . anything that gives you the sense of being known, feeling powerful, and feeling loved. Yet instant gratification has horrible side effects! Typically people who live this way for any length of time have a trail full of broken relationships that follow them.
You are proactive when you wisely assess the needs of your soul and then devise a healthy strategy to meet your needs. Metaphorically speaking, you stop eating out of dumpsters, and you start planning your meals.
One of the most basic ways to do this is through the power of love. You need a deep understanding and acceptance of love to seep so powerfully into your soul that it overflows out of you and into the hearts of others.
Love Is All You Need?
Let’s visit some of the foundational ways that felt love affects your soul and look into some healthy ways to proactively experience this kind of love.
In some ways it’s true that “all you need is love,” especially when you examine the Bible’s definitions of love. So let’s take a close look at the love of God—its definitions, attributes, expressions, and outcomes.
LOVE EXPERIENCED
I am convinced that wars would cease, crime would plummet, divorce would diminish, and immorality would fall if the human race just experienced these three words: you are loved!
When I first came to Bethel Church, one of my primary roles was counseling. I counseled about six people a day, four days a week, for about three years. Most of the people I worked with would identify themselves as Christians. Nearly all of them could quote (and often would quote) John 3:16, which reads, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son . . .” But I rarely met with people who had actually experienced the love of God. They stored truth in their heads, but somehow it never made the eighteen-inch journey to their hearts.
I am convinced that your heart can take you places your head can never go! The teacher in Proverbs put it like this:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
(PROVERBS 3:5)
Did you notice the wisest man in the world clearly said that we must trust God with our hearts, not our heads? In fact, he went on to say that we shouldn’t put a lot of weight in what we understand.
This is a difficult idea for those of us from Western cultures to process. In fact, there are two lies related to this dichotomy between the heart and the head that keep Westerners from experiencing the love of God. The first one is, “If we can explain God’s love, then we understand it. And if we understand it, we have experienced it.” The second lie is worse. It says, “We can’t experience something until we understand it.”
First of all, I would like to point out there is no definition of romantic love (much less God’s love) that adequately explains the experience. Furthermore, not one of us has ever fallen in love by reading the dictionary definitions of passion, romance, or love! Definitions pale in light of the experience.
Love was redefined for me the day I met Kathy lying on a raft in the middle of a lake in Nice, California. That girl took my breath away! I couldn’t sleep, I wasn’t hungry, and I couldn’t think. I was in love, and passion was awakened in me! There was no way I could explain what I was experiencing, but I certainly tried. I would spend hours talking to anybody who would listen to me as I tried desperately to explain the love I felt for Kathy. As you might imagine, the only people who understood me were those who themselves had the same experience. If romantic, human love has to be experienced to be understood, then how can the love of God be explained before it’s experienced?
Second, if the love of God must be experienced to be explained, then it stands to reason that you can experience things (and often do) before you can explain them. Believing you’ve experienced love because you have a biblical definition of it—or because you’ve memorized all the verses about the love of God in the Bible—is not only deceptive, it’s also destructive. Think about it: why would you continue to press in to experience deeper levels of God’s love if you’re convinced that there is nothing more to experience beyond the definition? In other words, what you know can keep you from what you need to know. This is especially true if you are unconsciously ignorant. You don’t know that you don’t know!
Just what are we missing when we limit our experience of God’s love to the definition we think we understand?
The apostle Paul prayed for the church that “[the Father] would grant you . . . to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16–19).
Oh man, that’s a mouthful! Did you feel it? Did you see it? Did you get it? Wow! Three things stand out to me from this passage: First of all, we are supposed to be rooted and grounded in love. In other words, the core foundation of everything we believe, do, say, live, and experience must flow from love, be motivated by love, and be grounded in love. And we are not to be rooted and grounded in just any love, but in the agape love of God that must be experienced to be comprehended (agape is the Greek word for God’s love).
But wait, it gets better! You are also invited to comprehend the love of God that’s beyond comprehension. Check it out one more time: “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” This is the place where the infinite transcends the finite, the supernatural infuses the biological, and the heart is enlightened to the secret dimensions of His passion for you! You heard me right; He is wild about you! He didn’t just die for you; He lives for you. In fact, He lives in you, around you, and through you.
God is all about you! I don’t mean you are all He has; I just mean you are His favorite. He tells you secrets the angels wish they knew (1 Peter 1:12). You are God’s inheritance (Ephesians 1:18); you are His son or daughter—His child—and part of His cosmic family (Romans 8:12–25). You are the only creature ever made in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26), the only one to be redeemed by the death of God Himself (John 3:16), and the only one allowed to carry His glory (John 17:22). You are the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8), the hope of His glory (Colossians 1:27), and the bride of the Bridegroom (Revelation 21:2). God rejoices over you with shouts of joy (Zephaniah 3:17). No one and nothing can separate you from His love (Romans 8:38–39), and anyone who messes with you must answer to Him (Romans 8:31).
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched people crumble under the revelation of God’s love for them. Often, in the midst of counseling people, I have told them that they need to experience the love of the Father. This must be some sort of unwritten signal for them to unleash a torrent of Bible verses because, almost without fail, believers feel compelled to quote every verse they have ever memorized from the Bible on the subject of love. When their surge subsides, I usually quietly lay my hand on their shoulders and ask the Father to show them His love. The responses are often dramatic and shocking. I’ve observed several of them falling out of their chairs onto the floor as waves of the Father’s love encompassed them. Others laughed uncontrollably for hours as God revealed layers and layers of His love for them.
It’s amazing to witness the healing power of God’s love. One story that catches my breath is about a girl I will call Jane. Jane was a pastor’s daughter who grew up in a fairly healthy home, but she had a serious case of anorexia. From the time she was thirteen years old, she spent more than half of her life in the hospital, often on life support. She nearly died four times. She had just been released from the hospital when I met her in a church service during a conference. She was about twenty years old then; she was very beautiful, yet she was skin and bones. Evidently her parents had begged her to come and hear me speak. Fear and shame had imprisoned Jane’s soul and relegated her to the walls of her bedroom, but she had left the safety of home to come to church that day.
She was sitting up front right next to me, although I had no idea who she was. During worship I suddenly felt prompted to lean over to this frail young woman and tell her how much God loved her. At first she seemed resistant, even defiant, but I persisted. I asked her if I could pray for her. In a quiet, shaky voice she said, “I guess so.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and began to pray a simple prayer over and over. “Jesus, show this beautiful woman how much you love her,” I asked. At first nothing seemed to change on the outside, but I could sense her heart softening, so I continued to pray. “Jesus, show this beautiful woman how much you love her!”
Tears emerged from her eyes and rolled gently down her face. Seconds later she fell to the ground in a puddle of tears, as her gentle weeping turned to violent sobbing.
I decided to leave her alone and let Jesus love on her. For a couple of hours she laid on the floor while waves of Jesus’ love crashed over her soul and washed her clean. Shame and guilt seemed to evaporate in the sunlight of God’s intense love. Most of the story was written in Jane’s countenance as she emerged from the puddle on the floor.
It’s been four years now since Jane was touched by the love of God. Since then she’s graduated from three years of the Bethel School of Ministry, she’s completely free of anorexia, and she is living a normal, healthy life.
The incredible thing is that Jane’s story is not unique! I have witnessed thousands of people touched by the extravagant love of God, freed from the bondage of sin, released from the prison of addictions, and healed in the depths of their souls. This is what happens when the revelation of Jesus’ love makes the eighteen-inch journey from the head to the heart. This is love experienced and yet not explained. This is it!
THE FACES OF LOVE
Let’s revisit Paul’s revelation of the love of God one more time. He wrote, “and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17–19, emphasis added).
The love of Jesus is multidimensional; it has breadth. It is an extensive, all-encompassing ocean of adoration that surrounds you with compassion and woos you with admiration. It covers you in dark seasons and protects you through the night. It greets you in the morning and smiles on you through the day. It is captured at dusk and expressed at dawn. It is hope to the discouraged and peace to the lost.
The love of Jesus has length; it goes the distance. You can’t fall so far that it can’t catch you, run so fast that it can’t get you, or hide so well that it can’t find you. His love is better than your worst day, stronger than the most defiant will, and more forgiving than your cruelest sin. When you give up, love goes on; when you fall down, it picks you up. Love is courage to the fearful, hope to the helpless, strength to the weary, and wealth to the impoverished. Love goes the distance!
The agape love of Christ has height; it exceeds all your expectations. Paul emphasizes this dimension of God’s love in the next verse when he writes that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20 nkjv). If you asked for it, love gives more; if you thought it, love takes it higher. If you dream big, love dreams bigger; if you aim high, love aims higher. You dream of a family; love dreams of a legacy. You ask for a job; love finds you a destiny. You hope for peace; love longs for a ministry. You pray for heaven; love gives you His city. Go ahead, think really big . . . but it will never compare to what love has already planned for you!
God’s love has depth; it is intense, complex, profound, and able to penetrate your soul. Love’s revelation perpetually unfolds as you peer into its substance and experience its splendor. Love is like poetry that awakens the mind to colors so vivid and beauty divine. Like an ocean so deep or a universe so vast, it beckons to be discovered and longs to be grasped. Mysteries and wonders unfold at your feet, and as you walk with His love, your fears He defeats. Deeper and deeper you tumble into God, enriched by His goodness and changed by His love. The depth of this mystery is hard to explain, for the ocean that is around you is in you, just the same.
LOVE WORKING IN YOU
Jesus said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Did you catch the word as? It’s profound how two small letters can change everything in your life. The word as means, “equally, since, when, like, because, or in the same way.” Let’s try a couple of these synonyms in the sentence, and see what emerges.
“Love your neighbor since you love yourself.” How about this one: “Love your neighbor because you love yourself.” In other words, you loving you is the foundation for you loving them: the people around you, your neighbor, your enemies, your family, and your God!
Many people let the love of God work through them, but they refuse to let God’s love work in them. I often hear people quote scriptures out of context to validate their lack of self-respect and self-love. For example, how many times have you heard this one: “I am just a sinner saved by grace.” Doesn’t this sound so humble? Actually, it points to an issue of pride.
The difference between humility and pride is that humility acknowledges the source of greatness as God. Therefore, it is Christ-centered. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. On the other hand, pride is self-made, ungrateful, entitled, and self-centered. Consider this: thinking badly about yourself is still prideful, because you made yourself the center of attention again . . . it’s still all about you.
HUMILITY ISN’T THINKING LESS OF YOURSELF; IT’S THINKING OF YOURSELF LESS.
Let me clear the fog hiding who you truly are because of God’s love. You were a sinner before you knew Jesus, but as soon as you received Him into your heart you became a saint! The apostle Paul wrote, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Christ gave His life for you when you were still prone to evil and an enemy of God. But then Jesus delivered you from darkness and purged the darkness from you. Suddenly you became the light of the world, and the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Now you are a new creation; those old, evil things are gone from your soul. You are royalty, nobility, a holy nation, and sons and daughters of the King Himself. You are joint heirs with Christ, you carry His divine nature, and you have His mind so you think as God does. You are currently seated with Jesus on the same throne (it must be a big seat) in heavenly places.
When you say you’re a sinner, you are telling Jesus, “What You did on the cross was enough to save me, but it wasn’t enough to transform me.” That’s stupid, and stupid is painful! Stupid can keep you from loving yourself, and if you don’t love yourself you can’t love anyone else! So do the world a favor, and begin to embrace God’s love for you by reminding yourself that you were born to be amazing because you were modeled after your Maker.
Love That Redefines You
My own struggle with low God-esteem (my perspective of God’s view of me) is well documented in my first book, The Supernatural Ways of Royalty. I have a PhD in self-hatred and self-condemnation. I spent the first forty years of my life building cases against other people, because I had a log stuck in my heart’s eye. I have come a long way in the last several years, yet the stench of low self-esteem still rears its ugly head at times.
The other day I had an incredible experience. Kathy and I were doing a photo shoot for our new blog. I hate people taking pictures of me, so I was not looking forward to the evening.
The Bethel media team arrived at my house with strawberries and M&Ms, my favorite junk food. A great beginning! Before they began taking pictures they all commented on how amazing we looked, how beautiful we were, and how great the pictures were going to turn out. I was thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever!
As they shot each picture they looked into the tiny screen on the camera and said, “Wow, that looks amazing.” “Well, that’s beautiful!” “Now that’s a great picture . . . you two are so photogenic.” “That’s a really great pose. You look great in that picture!” I kept thinking, Are you taking pictures of me? What the heck are you seeing in that little screen?
After about fifty shots, they said, “Let’s show you a few of the pictures.” As they flipped from screen to screen on the small camera viewer, they kept saying, “Isn’t that a beautiful picture? Wow! You look great in that picture. That shirt looks awesome on you. You and Kathy are so beautiful together! You guys look like models!”
I thought I looked fat, tired, and old; but as they continued to describe what they saw in the pictures, a new self-image began to form in my mind. I started to see the photographs from their perspectives. I have to say that was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
After the team left, Kathy and I sat on the couch together trying to describe what had just happened. There is something special about being in the presence of people who think you’re beautiful. It has a way of reforming you, reminding you, transforming the way you think about yourself. It’s love in action. It’s nourishment for your soul. Love is the inner health you need in order to walk freely in the purposes of God for your life.
I have a dream that each of us would create a culture that cultivates world-changers by loving unconditionally. Our love would be so incredibly deep that people would feel enveloped with a deep sense of belonging, and they would lose the fear of failure. I think The Message captures the essence of what I envision when it describes love:
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
(1 CORINTHIANS 13:4–7)
This is the kind of love that transforms people! This covenant love causes people to be fully actualized, because they know they are loved beyond their ability to perform.
For example, when coaches demonstrate this kind of love, their players know they are more important than the game. This gives them confidence to live out loud on the court, field, track, or pool. Conversely, when players are loved conditionally and shouted at continually for their mistakes, fear begins to seep into their souls. This ultimately undermines their ability to think clearly. They begin second-guessing every move they make and, consequently, they lose the capacity to act from instinct and muscle memory.
The ability to play from instinct and muscle memory is the catalyst that triggers what is often described as the “zone” in the sports world. Many athletes describe the zone as a kind of mystical experience where the game suddenly switches to slow motion, giving them the ability to anticipate the trajectory of the ball and act accordingly. Basketball players add another element to the zone. They say the zone causes the basket to double in size, which leads to their shot percentage skyrocketing.
Of course, my sports illustration is just an example of what happens when people are immersed in a culture that accepts them for who they are and refuses to punish them when they fail. Catalytic cultures that cultivate greatness speak more often to people’s potential than to their problems.
If you want to reach your full potential in God, you will need to find a culture where love flows through you, to you, and around you, or create one. Anything less will reduce your capacity, or at least delay your destiny.