“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.” Ephesians 3:19 (NLT)
If you are like me, you have a constant awareness of your shortcomings, sins, and regrets. It can keep you in a state of melancholy unless you combat it with something greater. That something greater is love, the love of God to be specific.
If you only glance at the love God has for you, you risk watering it down and even blowing it off. Take time to look closer and deeper at it. God’s love for you is intense, engulfing, passionate, and unconditional.
Wow.
Your inadequacies do not tarnish His love. Your struggles and strongholds can never diminish what He feels about you. Your failures do not fade His love. Overwhelming thought, is it not?
The first time I glimpsed this love in its purity and beauty, it undid me. I realized I had a brain belief with a side of emotion seasoned heavily with timidity. I knew His love was true, but I was afraid to look it full in the face. When I experienced His love through other people, I was a little embarrassed by it, and secretly wondered what people expected in return, fearing I would not be able to pay it, whatever it was.
Then Grace came in and explained that God’s brand of love is not seeking anything for itself; it’s focus is to give what could never have been earned in the first place. This provoked the opposite response from the hiding, embarrassed, and timid heart I’d had. No, Grace incited boldness in worship, contagious joy, and a desire share to what was overflowing in me.
I have not arrived. My understanding of such scandalous and amazing love is still limited, but it delights me to know I have eternity to explore its depths.
You too?
