203. Love is a Law, not a Reward — Adam Miller at Restore
Feb 10, 2024
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Author and speaker, Adam Miller, retells parables to explore the misconception of earning love. He emphasizes that God's love is constant and not something to be earned. Guilt and shame arise when we try to earn love that is already freely given. The session acts as a meditation to release worries of unworthiness, inviting us to embrace love as a verb instead.
Love is not a reward, but a commandment to be obeyed and a verb that requires our participation.
Righteous judgment is about seeing love as a moral law, rather than using judgment to determine who deserves to be loved.
Deep dives
Love cannot be earned or deserved
Love is not a reward or something to be earned. It is a commandment to be obeyed and a verb that requires our participation. The idea of trying to make ourselves perfectly lovable is a misunderstanding. Love is not about being worthy of love, but rather about loving others.
The parable of the Prodigal Son
The parable of the Prodigal Son highlights the misconceptions about love as a reward. Both the younger son and the elder son view love as something to be earned. The father, representing God, demonstrates the true nature of love by welcoming the wayward son unconditionally. Love is not a reward to be earned or withheld; it is a commandment to be obeyed.
The importance of righteous judgment
Righteous judgment is about seeing love as a moral law, rather than using judgment to determine who deserves to be loved. When we judge others based on their worthiness of love, we condemn ourselves to a similar judgment. Instead, we should focus on how we can love others, even those who may seem undeserving. By obeying love's law, we can experience the true joy and compassion that comes from a heart willing to embrace all.
We’re back sharing a favorite session from last year’s Restore Conference. In this session, Adam Miller retells the parable of the prodigal son and a highlight from the Children’s book series, 'Frog and Toad", to re-examine our relationship to love. It is our nature to think we have to work hard to earn love, and we constantly tell ourselves stories about what we have to do to earn it. But if God’s love is constant, then these stories are elaborate distractions. We feel guilt and shame whenever we try to earn love that is already given.
We always appreciate Adam for his wisdom, but also for the way he presents it. This session feels like a meditation that allows us to see the worries we carry that we are unworthy of love and release them, which God invites us to do. And, as Adam ends his session, “While [this] is still very hard work, it is work of an entirely different kind.”
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