Embracing God's LOVE

I'm heard this concept today from someone. "How come it's so easy for me to feel the love God has for someone, but so hard for me to accept the love He has for me?"

I think I am relational to a fault. I love having deep conversations and growing with friendships. But my problem and my gift is that I see God in people. When I see kindness, I see God. When I see grace, I think of the gift of grace God gives. And then when I see hurtful things, it's really hard for me to separate those things from God.

God is love. And sometimes that statement blows me away and sometimes it's incredibly hard for me to grasp. I feel that I've been given love, but I also feel at times that I've experienced a lot of abandonment. And it makes me afraid of embracing God's love and grace because the love I have been "given" has been conditional. It makes me afraid that love and grace would be taken away from me. Like I'm unworthy.

But Romans 8 says NOTHING in life nor death. NOTHING in ALL creation can separate me from the LOVE of God. I can't earn it. I can't loose it. And His heart just aches and aches and aches for me to accept it.

I absolutely love this C.S. Lewis quote:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

I love this quote because it's not one of those quotes about God will bless you with wonderful things. Of course He does, but I don't want to want things. I want to want God! In this quote, the blessing in the illustration is God Himself, living inside of me. And I really want to desire God immensely and find Him as enough. Anything more is not necessary, but an incredible gift.

Something I see as an incredible gift:  I love seeing God's grace with my best friend Joy Dean and seeing the journey of our friendship over sixteen years. I see God's consistency because I can't ever remember not knowing her. I see a lot of hurtful times, but I see so much grace. I see Joy as a witness to God's joy through her smile and her ways of loving people.

I'm thankful for that. And I want to be a reminder to her and her to me of God's character but also to push each other to seek Him first. That's who I want to be as a person, a witness of God, giving His love because I have accepted it.

And to add onto the song I posted from Mumford & Sons... Not only was I made to meet my Maker, I was made to know Him, to love Him. God didn't NEED me. He didn't Have to make me. He WANTED me. He's enthralled.

I'm confident in His enthralling Love. Confident that I can't ever loose that love because I never earned it in the first place. It's the most beautiful, incomprehensible, unexplainable gift.

The way you invest your love, you invest your life

I just love this song a lot...


Lyrics to Awake My Soul by Mumford & Sons :

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
My weakness I feel I must finally show

Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free
Har har, har har
har har, har har

awake my soul...
awake my soul...

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
My weakness I feel I must finally show
Har har, har har
har har, har har

In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life

In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life

awake my soul...
awake my soul...
awake my soul...
For you were made to meet your maker

awake my soul...
awake my soul...
awake my soul...
For you were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker

___________________________________

Every time things have become hard for me, I just have this desire to quit. But I don't feel that. I feel life. I feel the commitment I made to so many things in my life that the change that needs to occur is God changing something in me, not changing things around me. I feel  awake. And I want to invest my love, my life in something important.

Our Daily Bread's article from today. Author- Albert Lee
"Wonderfully Made"

When I was a child, someone close to me thought they could motivate me to do better by frequently asking me, “Why are you so stupid?” I didn’t know how much this had affected me until I was a teenager and heard someone behind me say, “Stupid!” At the word, I quickly turned around, thinking he was talking to me.

Knowing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord helped me to realize that because God created me in His image (Gen. 1:27), I’m not stupid but am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). God declares that all He has made is “very good” (Gen. 1:31), and the Psalms remind us that we are “skillfully wrought” (Ps. 139:15).

The psalmist David describes how God knows each one of us intimately: “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways” (vv.1-3).

Not only are we wonderfully made, but because of Christ’s death on the cross, we can also be wonderfully restored to a right relationship with God. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation . . . . All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17-18 NIV).

In His own image God created man,
He formed his body from the dust of the earth;
But more than that, to all who are in Christ
He gives eternal life by second birth. —Hess

Each person is a unique expression of God’s loving design.

In the heart of Christ

I feel as if I am falling in love with God for the first time.

I'm spending a summer in about the most beautiful place. Every day I've been spending an hour on my lunch break hiking up to a new favorite spot in the mountains and just sitting in His presence. I've had this overwhelming thought for the last couple weeks as I've been looking at the mountains, thinking "God made these mountains. He made them and said they are good. I am amazed by them." And then it hit me last week. God made man and said he was very good. If I can be so incredibly amazed by the beauty of the mountains, what stops me so often from seeing how God made me?

Sin.

I spent last semester confused and stuck in the thought of what in the world does it mean to have a relationship with God? So many Christians say "it's not about religion. It's about relationship" But what in the world does that mean?

And it's been hitting me through so many things this week. Maybe it's from the time I've spent in his creation or by myself or hurting over some of my own struggles.

The book- Embracing the Love of God by James Bryan Smith is totally changing me. He said in the chapter about embracing God's forgiveness: “When I was focused on not failing, I invariably failed. I tried hard not to fall, but since falling was what I was thinking about, falling is what I did. Once I began to experience God’s forgiveness, I quit looking at sin and started looking at God”

Turn from sin and turn to CHRIST! That's what the message of the gospel is all about.

I can't for a second claim perfection. Since I became a Christian, I have been so focused on how do I make people see Christ in me? How can I change their opinions from the girl they knew before Christ? It hit me that I've never really asked HIM to show Himself through me. I'm not saying I haven't been a Christian, but I feel like I haven't really sought after knowing God- truly, truly knowing Him.

When I have an issue to work through, it's important to work on it, but I can't do it on my own. I can't spend all my time pondering how to fix it, how to have the right words, how to change a situation. All I can do is focus on the heart of Christ.

What does that mean? Just like the quote from James Bryan Smith. I can't dwell on myself. I can't focus on failing/ not failing/ how to fix a situation. God desires my surrender. He desires my complete dependence in Him. And God knows we have sin. He knows we are not perfect, but He pushes us and challenges us and yet never leaves because He is God and therefore is consistent.

Completely consistent.

I am worthy of being loved simply because I am a child of God. I'm worthy of being shown grace because He has paid the highest price to give me grace.

I've been inconsistent, but I am loved by a consistent God. I've done hurtful things, but I am forgiven by the all graceful God. I've acted in impatience, and yet I've been waited upon by the all patient God. I've sinned, and yet I am completely treasured by the all-kind God.

I want to be in His character. I want to know Him to give His character to other people, not with the intent to make people see me as a better person, but to point people to CHRIST! I want to be out-pouring of the love that only comes from God in acting in grace, being more consistent, forgiving, patient, kind.

I want to be defined- completely shaped by Him.

And if God chooses to give me Himself and nothing more, I want to be content.

I want to fall in love with Him so much that even though I would experience pain, I would be content in His heart alone.