Last week I was given the opportunity to speak to a group of fitness coaches. As with each invitation I receive, I want only to say what God has prepared for the people I will impact. I began to pray for God to give me His message for these ladies several months ago.
In my human mind, I thought God might want me to speak on letting spiritual disciplines overrule health and business disciplines. Or maybe I could talk about Him being the bread of life. I don’t know. Many thoughts whirled while I prayed. But all of them were my thoughts. I waited to feel a prompting from the Lord. He gave me a message for them, but first He showed me that it needed to become a realization in my own life.
A little over a week ago, I was writing in my journal words of dedication to God. I wanted Him to know my sincerity. I wanted to pray with sincerity and work with sincerity and even read His Word with sincerity. All in all, I wanted God to know I am committed to follow Him.
Don’t get me wrong, mixed in with those prayers were prayers of confession. I confessed a critical heart, apathy, laziness, selfishness…all road blocks on the path He daily sets before me to walk with Him.
While writing in my journal I felt a request rise up in my heart from the Lord.
“Tammy, will you do something for Me?”
Yes, Lord! Yes! I want to do whatever You ask.
“I want you to let Me love you.”
(Silence)
“What, Lord? But I do let You love me. Don’t I?”
“You say you know I love you. You talk about my love. You even quote scripture about My love. But do you receive my love? Do you know My love is not a blanket emotion ‘for all to receive’. It’s personal. Will you let it be?”
Friends, I wonder to myself how many of you are like me? You can imagine a love like God describes for us in His Word. You can’t imagine a personal, loving God who never gets too busy and forgets to “touch base.” I struggled not only to comprehend it but to believe it for myself.
I have asked my middle school d-group to memorize Zephaniah 3:17.
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
This verse sits in the middle of a chapter written to a rebellious people. God’s people had turned their back on Him. They had long forgotten Him and He was calling them back.
It wasn’t like God said, “You’ve been doing such a good job being ‘holy’ and well-behaved, I’m going to now lavish My love on you. I’m actually starting to enjoy you. So I will sing songs over you.”
NO! He spoke to the rebellious generation and told them. RETURN TO ME!
Hey, I am real!
I am your Mighty Savior!
You’ve been lost in your wandering. But come to me!
I will take delight over you with gladness.
I will calm all your fears. And how will I do it?
WITH.MY.LOVE.
I will rejoice (feel or show great joy & delight) over you with joyful songs.
Friend, are you able to believe right now that God loves you like that?
PINIMAGESeveral years ago a dear woman in our church, Ginny Emerson, called Mark and I to the hospital. She was dying. After a long battle, cancer had wreaked havoc on her body. I have to be honest, I was afraid to go. I was afraid to enter into her pain and suffering. My mind had been pondering all of the ways this must be so scary for her. Only in her 50s, she has a beautiful family – a husband, children and grandchildren. I prayed for strength all the way to her hospital room, afraid I might cry and make the moment about me and I didn’t want that. I’m sure the last thing she would want to deal with is to have to comfort me when she was the one suffering.
I walked in and was taken back by her smile, her air of contentedness. We were there to talk about her funeral arrangements. Yet I sensed no fear or panic in her. Not even resignation or despair. I felt hope. It emanated from her. Peace filled the room.
After we discussed the funeral Mark began talking with someone else in the room. I can’t remember who. In a quiet moment between Ginny and me, astounded by her peaceful countenance, I said, “Ginny, when you are here alone in your room and you talk to God. What do you say? What does He say?”
Honestly, I imagine if I was sitting in that bed, I would be taking every moment to make sure God was handling all the details and needs of those I left behind. I think I would feel the need to negotiate and beg Him to get everything lined up just so.
She turned to me and said, “I don’t say much really. And He just constantly whispers to me, ‘I love you.’ He tells me He loves me over and over again.” She was absolutely certain of His love and felt it with every fiber of her being.
Because she had allowed Him to love her, she received, with His love, the confidence that all her heart’s desires were also in His loving, attentive hands.
I’ll never forget it.
God’s love breaks through in the strangest places.
His love overcomes death.
His love overcomes fear.
His love overcomes despair.
His love overcomes guilt and shame.
His love overcomes pain.
His love overcomes insecurity and doubt.
His love overcomes.
Paul, who was sitting in a prison cell, wrote a letter to the church of Ephesus. This was his great desire:
I pray that from his (God’s) glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Ephesians 3:16-19 (emphasis mine)
Paul tells us basically that this Love of God is so complete that we just won’t be able to fully understand it or contain it this side of heaven. But friend, is it bubbling over in your life? Or flowing into your heart with a trickle?
I want to let Him love me with my arms and my heart open to receive.
Do you let God love you like that?
J I Packer once said:
He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort…in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good.
He says, there is no moment when His care falters. Oh, God help me to believe this in my own heart!
Are you really good about serving God but afraid of loving Him?
Are you keeping Him at arms length?
Does it seem impossible that God would want to sing songs over you?
Has the enemy created walls of deception keeping you from your Loving Father, causing you to fear Him instead?
Return to Him.
Confess to Him.
Surrender to His love.
Make time for Him and learn about His love.
He’s written us a love letter (the Bible) to express just how great His love for us is. READ IT. Take it in.
That’s what I’m working on today.
More important than grocery pick-up.
More important than running my errands.
More important than completing that project or buying that newfangled thing.
More important than anything I will do for Him in the name of ministry.
I want to let Him love me.
Let us pray, today and always, what Paul expressed:
Dear Lord, I ask that you would empower me with inner strength and ability through your Spirit. Help me to trust in the work Christ did for me, opening the door of Your unlimited love. I pray Your love would grow down into my heart and keep me strong.
Help me to understand how wide, how long, how high, and how deep Your love is for me. I know I cannot fully comprehend it here but I pray You will have Your way in my heart, making me complete.
Lord help me to let You love me. In Jesus name, Amen.
