Happy Love Week!!
I want to talk to you all today about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and that is God's love. We always hear about God's love but do we truly know His love? Do we truly have a revelation of God's love for us?
Romans 8 is a chapter that reflects God's love for us and I encourage you all to read it and meditate on it. I believe that Paul, the writer of the book of Romans, had a revelation of God's love for him. I think about how Saul of Tarsus met the love of Christ on the road to Damascus and that encounter changed him forever. This man who once persecuted and killed Christians became filled with the love of God in that moment and found a purpose in His Creator. Saul, once marked by sin, became Paul, changed by the love and grace of God.
Romans 8:35, 37-39 (AMP) says, "Who shall ever separate us from Christ's love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress or peril or sword? Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
If anyone in the Bible had the ability to doubt God's love, it was Paul. He was persecuted and beaten for preaching the Gospel to the churches and thrown into prison, but He knew God loved Him. That revelation of God's love caused him to know he was more than a conqueror. God's love gave him the security and confidence to know he would come out of every situation on top.
Ephesians 3:17-19 (AMP) replicate what we just saw in those last verses saying, "May Christ through your faith actually dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love. That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of it: That you may really come to know, through experience for yourselves, the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge; that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
When I read this verse I think of a tree (pretty random, I know). However, it really ties into the scripture to illustrate the point. A strong, healthy tree has roots that go down deep that keep it steady when the storms come against it. I relate this to the circumstances and storms of life that can come against us as believers when we walk by faith on a daily basis. When we have a revelation of the love of God, so much that we are rooted and grounded in it, we will never fail or fall.
So much security and confidence comes from knowing the love of the Father. I love thinking about how His arms are always open and ready for me to just receive His embrace. He never withholds anything from us. His love always wants to give back to us.
One last verse I would like to share is found in 1 John 3:1 (AMP) which says, "See what an [incredible] quality of love the Father has given us, that we should be named and called and counted the children of God! And so we are!"
That really just brings joy to my soul!! God loves us and sees us through the filter of His Son, Jesus. He sees us as perfect, complete, whole, and blameless. He calls us His children and He will never disown us! If you would just choose to meditate on that every fear and worry would disappear because fear comes from doubting God's love for us.
I'll never forget when I truly had a revelation of God's love for me for the first time. I had always grown up knowing and believing God loved me and would never stop loving me, but the Lord took that knowledge and bumped it up to an even higher level of experience I had never known before.
I was just starting my freshman year at ORU and moving in to this new place. At the same time, I had just ended what I thought was going to be a great relationship with this guy I was interested in and I felt crushed. I remember my first week at ORU just feeling alone and hurt. In that season, I just sought the Lord and turned to Him and I'll never forget how His love restored me and made me see a different side of Him. I saw God as more than just my loving Father. I saw Him as my Restorer and my Counselor. I remember digging so deep into Him and finding that I didn't need anyone else's love to feel loved. I already had all the love I needed in Him.
From that day forward, my perception of God's love changed so much. I had a deeper understanding of it through experience. I don't know what you've gone through or are going through right now, but God just wants you to know He loves you endlessly. His love will get you through anything and cause you to know Him more intimately. My prayer for you is that you would come to know the height, length, width, and depth of the Father's love for you. His love surpasses any human love and will never fail you!
This is not what I originally planned to talk about, but this just came out of my spirit tonight, straight from Jesus. He's so awesome! Enjoy your week everybody and purpose to show God's unchanging love to everyone you come into contact with :)
Photo Source: typographicverses.com
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