A Little Stronger Everyday

What if?

What if perfect love drives out fear?

What if:

You jump and find the greatest love of your life waiting to catch you?
You cease your striving and sink deeply into rest?
You find all you’ve ever wanted on the other side of surrender?
Becoming love is a natural extension of divine relationship?
Your gifts and calling are who He has made you to be- a carrier of His very Spirit?

This world wants to distract and numb you, so that the music of the divine song is lost in the chaos. But all of creation points to the beauty you were created for. You can feel the song within your heart if you close your eyes and listen closely…

You are not a mistake. You have purpose and are here for a reason-
For such a time as this.

May you walk in your unique purpose, may you rest in love, and may all your strivings cease in the arms of relentless and abiding love.

Love

There’s something so many of us get hopelessly wrong when it comes to God. You see, we underestimate the depths of His love for us. His love is like an ocean, and yet, we prefer to sit in puddles. In the church (I mean the body of Christ, not buildings or traditions of man) we strive to merely intellectualize Him, and go thirsty when living waters exist within our bellies, if we would only cease our striving and rest in that love. We condemn others, when Jesus Himself told us He came into this world not to condemn but to love, to save, to redeem and restore.

Outside of the church, outside of belief, we doubt this love and instead choose to run the other way, as fast as we can. And yet-
He still loves us. He still carries us through our darkest moments. He whispers to us in the night- “You don’t have to do this alone. Come to me, all who are weary.”

Yes, God has a way that is good for us. That brings freedom and peace. He is holy, and true, and pure and good. But He also respects our right to choose to love Him back. For if He forced us to love Him, that wouldn’t really be love, would it?

If we ever doubt the well of God’s love for us, we need only look to Jesus’ story of the prodigal son. As the prodigal walked towards his father, rehearsing his apology speech, his father came running to him and embraced him with abandon. This is the love of God for each one of His children. Whether we believe He exists or not. Whether we miss the mark repeatedly, rebel voraciously or try to check off all the boxes of legalism.

This love is not found in rule following. It’s not earned. It’s freely given. It’s already yours. All you have to do it open up your tightly closed hands and accept it. Which somehow is the hardest thing for us to do. Yet, the very surrender that gives up our own will and way brings freedom our own way could never deliver.

And then He teaches us how to love. How to become love. For He is gentle and lowly, and His yoke is light. He restores what is broken, redeems, heals, and brings wholeness.

There’s an old hymn (O Holy Night, written by Placide Cappeau and composed to music by Adolphe Adam) that says: “His law is love and His gospel is peace.” When asked to sum up the law, Jesus said to love God and to love others. In Corinthians, Paul says everything is meaningless, even martyrdom, if it doesn’t spring from love.

So when I forget what’s most important, may He again center me in this love. This all-consuming, refining and perfecting love without measure and without end. For nothing compares to this love, in any realm, in any timeline, in any place in all the universe.

May you know it and be known by it. May He bless you and keep you as you stop your striving and rest in His perfect love. Held. Carried. Fully known, and fully loved.

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“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
-Jesus in John 3:17

“God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
-1 John 4:16

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”
-Isaiah 49:16

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
-Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
-Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

-1 Corinthians 13