Let Me Love You.


(Written for YFC  Portage Banquet 2017)

Just pretend I am looking at you in the eye as I read this.  Pretend that I've read the below transcript word for word and that I am really good at being creative with videography :) It's just me in real time on video...*eye-rollong smile*
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“Let ME love you!” is the invitation that has been sung from Jesus and I have been hearing over myself these days and over the Youth of Portage.  You don’t have to hang around YFC long before you hear stories of distorted, false versions of what love is.  In our world, love is a feeling. Love can be superficial...a magic word that gets you your next fix, friend or food plate.  It is my huge honor as child of God, a woman, and Youth worker to speak truth and live Truth out  before these lies and misconceptions about Who love is, about how humans are reflections of it and how it works itself out in relationships, families and teenage lives.
Many Youth who step into the doors of the Youth Centre...and maybe even many of us sitting in this room tonight believe and live in the space of feeling like we have to earn love from God and others.  I watched this play out the other night at Drop In.  A Youth who is often sitting by himself at school and has expressed many times that he has no friends came in.  This time though he came in with a few of our regular students. He had been hanging out with them at school. He  looked very excited to have people around him.  I was excited!  He came up to the counter opened his wallet and then said  to the person at the counter he was buying his friends something!  Again, I thought he was just being kind and was excited for him!  The next words I heard from him told me different!  He said, “This is how I get friends!”  Though it is often a kind thing to buy things for a friend, the sad reality was that this Youth was using money to buy his friends. He thought that by buying his friends snacks  that that was his way of earning acceptance, friendship, belonging, love.  This may work for awhile, but the sad truth of it is that if you go around trying to buy love...you’ll end up feeling used, broken and confused and empty.
BUT here’s what Jesus says to us and the Youth of Portage….”Let ME love you!  Let Me love you as you are...I paid your debt...I bled, died and rose again to love You wholly and completely.  I love you as you are and will love you into becoming more like Me!”  You don’t have to do anything...just come, let Me love you!  Come, receive!  Hear the Truth that it’s not your works...it’s My work on the cross that set you free! You don’t have to earn it.. Just let me Love you...and let my Love transform you.  

Thank you Portage Community and friends of YFC for supporting me and us at YFC so we can uncover for Youth what true  love is...Who true  love is and keep calling them into this invitation. ♮  Let Him love you! Let Him love you..Just receive!

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