To really understand and comprehend that we are completely known and loved by God is life changing. When we truly understand that, it will change the very course of our life.
To be loved is one thing, but to be known and loved is quite another. This God who sees the deepest and darkest part of every heart, has offered a love so grand that sacrifice seemed smaller than His desire to bring hope and restoration to His beloved dying world.
As if it were not enough that He loves the world, He loves each beating heart with a fierceness that compels Him to intervene and move all toward Himself. Some hearts can’t see it, but He stands ready and waiting for the faintest cry. Not only that, but this love pursues even those hearts that resist Him.
The Father spared no expense to show His extravagant and incomprehensible love towards us, not even sparing His own Son.
This love manifest in the form of an infant was not given grudgingly, but in hope and anticipation. He set a plan in motion. A plan that would rescue the objects of His love. His heart is drawn to the oppressed, the downtrodden, the unseen, the ones who feel that they can’t go on. He goes after the ones who have lost hope; the ones who cannot imagine ever being really free. He came for those who cannot free themselves; the brokenhearted who don’t know if they can make it through the next day.
He is not scared by the brokenness or the ugliness in man for He sees the beauty in what He has created and the destruction that has come. He came to strip away the ugly places and make beauty from the ashes. This restoring God knows how to heal the most damaged places. He calls this time in history favorable, for He came to restore all things and enacted a plan that His beloved man can be restored. He preferred to die over seeing his created ones destroyed. (Luke 4:19)
His word is filled from beginning to end with themes and stories of his unshakable love lavishly demonstrated towards the ones whom he breathed his own breath into.
To be fully and completely known and yet be fully and completely loved is something that we have such a hard time grasping and yet it is central to our wholeness and a life well lived.
When we begin to grasp how deep and wide this love is, we no longer live in fear. To be fully loved gives us the freedom to be fully known. When we begin to see that we have nothing to fear with Him, we are on the road to real life change because we can begin to open our hearts to Him. His love can invade those places of brokenness, hurt, sin, insecurity, control, fear, anger, loneliness and every other thing that holds us back from being who He created and intended for us to be. His love casts out our fear and brings us into the freedom that He has fought so hard for. His love conquers all.
Word of the Day: I John 4:16-19 NLT We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.18Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 19We love each otherb because he loved us first.
Prayer: Father, Thank You for your perfect love towards me. Show me your heart for me and help me to know your love in a deeper way. I choose to open up my heart to you to do what you want to in me. Help me to trust you with the deepest part of me. I choose to let you do what only you can do. Thank you that you know every part about me yet you still deeply love me. Thank you that I can rest in that.