God completely understands every struggle that you have, and every weakness that you fear about yourself. In His great love for you He has set aside a place in His Beloved for you to enjoy and know His fullest affection.
~ Graham Cooke
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.
~ John, The Beloved Disciple, in 1 John 4
Oh beloved, it is true. We hear that we are loved, but we don’t (yet) really believe it. The crushing imposition of the circumstances swirling around us distract us from the Truth. And just when we think we feel it, the feeling flees off into the distance.
We freak out when we make a mistake.
We forecast people’s retribution towards us.
We feel the disorientation of not knowing our future.
We fret over the balance of our accounts.
We fuss under the pain of aging bodies.
We forget the places G_d has brought us out of.
We forsake our first Love and have an affair with fear.
Why do we do this?
Perhaps it is because we really do not understand the word: Love. For so many of us, love is but a fleeting fancy or an affection for something. Even if we are beginning to learn what it means, we always fall short because of the fickleness of our own fallen natures. And then… G_d tears the scales off our eyes.
God is Love.
God is Kind.
God does not change. Ever.
The Loving-kindness of G_d is simply who He is. It is an anchor for our spirit and soul and senses that can attach itself to any point in space or time, because He was, is, and will always be right there.
Can we see it? That the expanse of the entire universe was hung on the breath of a few words of the Creator; this we can almost comprehend. But, that the Great Love of the One who spoke these words is the power both pursuing and at work within us; this is beyond our human capability to grasp.
However, when we begin to get a sense of what this Love is, it drives us to our knees and makes us leap at the same time. This Love puts us at the very end of ourselves, and all we can do is scream out in our spirit the same words the burning ones around the throne do forever: Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. For, this Loving-kindness, this “Chesed” defies any definition or constraint – and will take us forever to fully discover.
So, are you feeling fear beloved? It can be weird getting used to living in the bright light of His Loving Presence (and the absence of so many of the constraints we used to live under). But just as surely as there is confusion at first, there are deep and eternal answers that grow within us as His Word and Spirit go to work at leading us into all truth. This Truth is that He is Love and has both infinite power and desire to impart His very Self unto us. And even further, He has promised that He will do it.
Would you live free? Would you be Loved? Tonight is the night beloved. Let Him Love you.
