Everyone longs for true love, but we often don’t recognise how much we are loved already. Does a child feel how much their parents love them? Children don’t have the capacity to fully comprehend their parents hearts, and can often misunderstand their parents actions. We are like this in relation to God, not fully comprehending His love for us, so we look for it in others.
Let Go of Your Expectations of Others
Spiritual growth is about becoming the embodiment of God’s love. We have to seek our value in God, and grow in relationship with one another. If we leave God out of the picture, we end up expecting too much from others. Then we feel disappointed or hurt.
In the video below Joel Olsteen emphasizes that we shouldn’t depend on others to validate our worth. Our mood or self-esteem is often affected by what others think or say about us. In this way, we give away our own power and put too much burden on others.
Joel makes the point that because God loves us and believes in us, we need to believe in ourselves. If we see ourselves from God’s viewpoint, then we can let go of the need for praise and recognition from others. Through receiving God’s love, we become less needy and can enjoy better relationships.
This is a beautiful message that everyone can benefit from:
Validate your worth in God to find lasting happiness
Rev. Moon has spoken many times on the same topic:
“People desire happiness, but always in a self-centered way. What is happiness? For single men and women, you think it may lie in having good spouses. Can the mate of your dreams really bring you happiness from the beginning of your married life to the end?
In the beginning, you may be happy, but later, there can be sickness, disappointment in each other, things like that. Your mate may die before you, leaving you bereaved. Can you be happy in that situation? You might be less happy than when you first married him or her.
You may think that when you have children, you would be very happy, but the same thing applies — who knows? — your children may become unhappy, disabled, or sick. From this viewpoint, you cannot expect lasting happiness from your loved ones.
Would money make you happy? Suppose you have $10,000 in your pocket; your mind would be preoccupied with that, and you couldn’t relax. When you compare someone from a poor family, and someone from a rich family, usually people think the one from the rich family must be happy. But it’s not necessarily like that.
Then where does happiness lie, if knowledge, money, power, everything can just drift away. People want eternal happiness, absolute happiness, because all relative happiness can pass away with time and environment. Eternal happiness can only come from an eternal source.
All through our lives we have been looking for true happiness through other people. But others alone cannot make us happy. We must have things around us. So, for most people, material wealth has been important. As you well know, human history has been a succession of wars for land or wealth. Would what you possess right now bring you happiness? Would it be a real happiness which will last through eternity? What you enjoy now can disappear tomorrow.
Who can make the whole world happy? If there is any such person in the world, God would like to find him. All through history people have struggled hard to find real happiness, but they have failed because real happiness lies only in finding happiness in relation to the eternal God.” – Sun Myung Moon, Excerpts from the speech, “God And I”
“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make, makes you. Choose wisely.” – Roy T. Bennett
