Live from Loved

Pause. Breathe. Reflect.

What would it feel like to live from a place of being wholly, totally, and completely loved? Where there is nothing to fear, nothing to achieve, nothing to create, nothing to prove, nothing to fight for, nothing to preserve, nothing to escape, nothing to force, and nothing left out?

What does it feel like to consider that there is no fear so frantic, no desire so desperate, no longing so unanswered that you are disqualified from love so perfect, so complete, so whole?

Live from loved.

Read it again. Live from “loved,” not just from “love.” This is a beautiful invitation to rest, not a command to do more.

Approach everything from the place of “I AM LOVED” and everything else will fall into place. I believe this is what it means to live first for the Kingdom of God – the kingdom where first and foremost everyone is loved, and everyone loves from that place.

How gracious is God that because of Jesus he sees and knows and holds and loves us!

You likely know that I’m an Enneagram teacher, so this might surprise you: I do not believe the Enneagram will bring us to this kind of love because it’s not a love we can generate on our own. We can get close, but perfect love? Actually, I’m not sure I can get close to that at all!

I have found, however, that the Enneagram is an incredibly helpful tool in helping us identify how we live from fear rather than living from the place of knowing that we are loved. That is our deepest desire after all – to be fully known and fully loved. Why is it so hard to rest there?

I teach the Enneagram because it helps us to understand the stories we’ve been telling ourselves and the conversations we’ve been having with the world about how loved or unloved we feel we are. As we begin to uncover the armor, the strategies, and the proofs we’ve wrapped around ourselves, we come to a place where we can stand naked and unashamed in the presence of God because we can finally see that the core of who we are is "one who is absolutely loved." We can be confident in his grace as our covering rather than the façade we’ve stitched together out of fears that hold us back, desires that push us stumbling forward, and defenses ready to wage war over trifles.

We no longer live from scared – acting, thinking, and feeling in the automatic patterns of self-defeat – but we live from loved – acting, thinking, and feeling everything from a place of certainty of our own worth embedded in our identity in Christ. We can “do everything in love” (1 Cor. 16:14) because we are “first loved” (1 John 4:19) and we are aware of it in our mind, hearts, and bodies – not just in the center that usually leads. And in so doing, we can love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and strength(body), and love our neighbors as ourselves – as we ourselves are loved by God. This is powerful.

The Enneagram helps us see in nine different ways how we manage to fight, flee, or freeze to that love and how we can consent, rest, and engage with the One who IS Love. It is a tool to help unlock and uncover who God created us to be so that there is an unblocked flow of Love and Presence and Life.

More than anything, the Enneagram helps us to see that we have a choice, and not just a choice, but a chance to make a choice. We don’t have to live in automatic patterns, slaves to our unconscious motivations, comfortable with our sleepy neglect of the inner world, unaware of how our habits form our desires which form our worship which forms our love. As we explore our type structures, we are equipped with tools to catch ourselves in the moment, interrupt the usual mode of operation, and shift our actions, thoughts, and feelings in the direction of health, growth, and love.

For some, the Enneagram is superfluous and unnecessary. You already have a practice that helps you live alive to love. For others, the Enneagram will be revolutionary as it brings into awareness what you’ve always sensed but never articulated and provides methods to wake up and speak light into darkness.

Identifying our Enneagram type helps us become aware of how we’ve been unconsciously and automatically living from fear. Then we learn to dis-identify with these patterns as we re-position ourselves as people who are beloved. Oh, so beloved.

I whole-heartedly believe this repositioning changes everything.

When we are living from loved, we no longer focus on our own self-righteousness.

When we are living from loved, we no longer try to prove that we are worthy of love.

When we are living from loved, we no longer strive to earn recognition and praise.

When we are living from loved, we no longer feel abandoned and meaningless.

When we are living from loved, we no longer live from scarcity.

When we are living from loved, we no longer fear the worst.

When we are living from loved, we no longer distract from pain.

When we are living from loved, we no longer fight every shadow of a threat.

When we are living from loved, we no longer fall asleep to who we truly were created to be.

When we are living from loved, we can walk in the world without fear because we are built on a sure foundation. We can be confident and humble at the same time because we know the God who loves us completely also loves those around us. We can share that love without wondering if it will ever run out. And when we find ourselves exhausted, lonely, frustrated, upset, disappointed, anxious, neglected, judged, or betrayed, we can come home to “Loved” instead of trying to make it on our own.

Love is always the answer to fear as “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and when we realize we are perfectly loved by Love itself, we are no longer even able to live in fear.

You always have a choice. You can live from fear or from loved. And if I might be so bold, living from loved is so much more life giving.

Choose life.

Live from loved.