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.