"Don't be afraid of....being loved, I guess." ~ Drew to Anna

This was one of my favourite moments in the script. It happens between Anna and Drew. In the midst of sharing God's love with other people, Anna always seems to forget to receive that love for herself. It is often so much easier to understand how to love others for God then to learn to receive God's love for ourselves, but unless we do, we will just get worn out. I also think it is really significant that it is Drew who speaks God's message to her. It's not that Drew is sharing out of his own experience really, it's that God has chosen to use Drew in this moment to tell Anna what she needs to hear. It's not even that God takes over Drew to say it, but because Drew is willing to let God move in him, he becomes sensitive to what God's desire is for Anna, and that is for her to let herself be loved.

There are lots of things that can keep us from accepting Jesus' love for us. Sometimes we can spend so much time trying to prove we can do everything on our own, that if we actually let God in to love us, we're afraid we will become vulnerable and our weakness would show through. Sometimes we can just find it too hard to believe. We might have a hard time finding anyone else in our lives that we really believe loves us, so why would God love us? Or maybe we just don't feel like we deserve it, and so even though God offers this gift to us, we can't open it and enjoy it. God's love is like a present we know is in the box, wonderful, but all wrapped up. We tell other people about it, but just can't seem to let it be real for ourselves.

But if we could just stop being afraid for long enough, stop trying to prove we are tough, stop pretending we can make it on our own, we would let God in. When God comes in it changes everything! It's true that when we let God love us we will be vulnerable; but God's love protects us because we finally know that we really have value. When we let Christ meet us and take his hand, He shows us that all the promises that He made, about hope, eternal life, always being with us, all of these are true for us! They aren't just true for someone else. The best part is that God knows EVERYTHING about us anyway! So we never have to be afraid that He'll find something out about us and stop loving us. He knows us even better than ourselves. When we can live as someone who is love, and who is in love, with Jesus, all of a sudden we will know we don't have to be afraid anymore. Our insecurities are made secure by the love of the Jesus who seeks us out, who shows up in the middle of our crap, and who won't exploit us when we are vulnerable and scared. And the bonus is, that by letting God love us to the depth of our being, we actually learn how to love others more.

Check out Ephesians 3:17-19 And 1 John 4:19

What's holding you back from opening the gift of love that God offers you?

How does the fact that Jesus came into the world to meet us help you understand what God's love is like?

In what ways is God's love different from the love of other people?

Jenn Burnett is completing her seminary studies at Emmanuel College in Toronto, and continues to lend her drama and speaking gifts to the youth eventz services. Jenn (and her husband Adam and son Noah) hail from St. George Ontario.