Jesus Commanded Bold Love, Not Sentiment

I’ve put off loving boldly because I’ve decided the cost was too great. That’s just it… loving boldly requires emptying myself, it demands I move to action, it makes me uncomfortable and stretches me to my limits. The cost is too high.

Mother Teresa once said, “I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, but only more love.” For years, I didn’t believe her.

Growing up, I was definitely a daddy’s girl. My dad took me everywhere with him. He was a teacher, so every July I went with him to work to get his classroom ready. He needed to run an errand, I tagged along. He worked out in the yard, so did I. When I was a little girl and couldn’t sleep, he would kneel by my bed and stay with me until I finally fell asleep. I loved my dad in a way that only daughters can… I loved him so much it hurt. I loved him so much, I thought he hung the moon and all the stars in the sky.

My love for him moved me to action, too. I wanted to help him build our shed, mow the lawn, clean the pool, pour concrete for our driveway, and then later take him to doctor’s appointments and help him clean the house when he was too sick to move. In the 80s there was an old McDonald’s commercial that was actually called “Daddy’s Little Girl” and every time it came on, I cried. Because that cheesy and sentimental commercial was exactly me and my dad and I loved him.

When my dad passed away in 2011, I felt the full weight of what it costs to love someone completely.

And I think that’s what scares us most about loving boldly–not the loss itself but knowing that love will eventually ask something of us. That it will demand our time, our comfort, our pride. That it might break our hearts. So we decide to protect ourselves before we can be hurt. We pull back. We love, but with conditions. We keep people at arm’s length where they can’t really hurt us. We say we care, but we don’t get close enough to actually feel someone else’s pain as our own.

It’s much easier to say we love our neighbor than to actually demonstrate that love. It’s easy for us to donate money to help people rather than sit with them in their pain. It’s easy to not see the people and only see the problem. To compartmentalize our feelings. That way we can’t be hurt. But we’ve missed the mark on how God calls us to love when we reduce love to this.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the things that love asks of us–our time, our resources, our comfort, our pride–maintaining each of those is exhausting. Protecting ourselves from love’s demands is so hard and can feel so heavy. We carry the weight of our self-protection everywhere we go. Here’s the paradox I think Mother Teresa was talking about: when we allow love to take those things we’ve deemed too costly, when we let them go, we are freer, less bound. If you love until it costs you everything, then there’s no more room for anything but love.

I would not trade a single moment with my dad to avoid the pain of losing him. Not one July afternoon in his classroom. Not one McDonald’s commercial that made me cry. Not one doctor’s appointment or day spent helping him when he was sick. Because that love–even though it cost me everything–made me more like the person God created me to be. It shaped me into someone who reflects Christ more clearly than self-protection ever could. That’s what loving boldly does. It transforms us into the image of the one who loved us first.

Jesus demonstrated this to us. The perfect example of how we should love boldly. Not just in how he loved the people he interacted with, but in the ultimate sacrifice he gave–the move to action that set us free. He didn’t love us from a safe distance. He didn’t keep conditions in place to protect himself. He emptied himself completely. And that’s what he calls us to do. Not because it’s easy. Not because it won’t hurt. But because living with our hearts fully open–even when it costs us–is the only way to reflect the God who is love itself.

If you’ve been holding back–loving with one foot out the door, ready to run when it gets too hard–I want to tell you something: The cost of loving boldly is real. It will ask things of you. It will stretch you. It will hurt sometimes. But the cost of not loving boldly is greater.

May you find the courage to love the people in front of you without conditions or escape routes. May you let love move you to action, even when it’s inconvenient. May you risk looking foolish, giving up your comfort, sacrificing your time, for the sake of loving someone well. May you discover that the weight you’ve been carrying–all that self-protection, all those carefully maintained boundaries–is heavier than the cost of love itself. May you know the freedom that comes when you stop holding back and start loving boldly. And may you find, in the paradox, that when you love until it hurts, there is no more hurt–only more love.