I am seeing visions that love is coming and hearing a lot about love needed. So,what´s the deal?
The deal is, love is what our lives should be in pursuit of. Love is what our thoughts, meditations and lives should produce. But how can that happen when what we put in is junk? Everyone thinks the old adage ¨you are what you eat¨ only applies to food but it does not. Are we not told to EAT the bread of Life,daily? I´m sure I am not the only one who has heard that the Bible is Gods love letter to man. If we put the Word of God in,which is another expression of His love for us, then love is what should come out of us too. Yes it matters how much you and I put in.
Ever made pancakes with no baking power or baking soda? It produces flat pancakes. How about too much? Ever add too much? The pancakes expand and get full of lovely air bubbles making the fluffiest pancakes around! So fluffy that the syrup just soaks in deep becoming one with the pancake, instead of sitting on the top. Doesn´t Gods word work like the raising agent in pancakes? Add little or none to your daily life and the love He and others attempt to pour into you just doesn´t get absorbed! Being careful to add lots of Gods word into our daily lives, in reading, meditating, speaking, proclaiming and even praying back His word to Him makes your heart, your life soft and fluffy so that as God and others pour out their love you absorb it quickly! I have watched my kids do this, if you keep pouring on the sweet syrup eventually the pancake gets over saturated and what comes out when you poke it with your folk is syrup. That´s the result I want in my life. I know that right now I´m not at full saturation level, but it is the goal.
I´m not the kind who likes to be left hanging without an action plan. I always disliked messages that told me what I was doing wrong but gave me no hope or plan to improve. So, I want to look at a few things I have been taught or learned in my life to put myself on the plate (to carry the pancake analogy just over the top). I mentioned a few practical things above that help prepare us to receive love. Reading Gods word, meditating or thinking about Gods word, speaking Gods word, yes out loud to yourself, proclaiming His word and promises over yourself and your circumstances, and even praying back His word to Him. These last two are often neglected.
Now I´m no fool. I can hear some of you say, ¨but I have done all that and I still don´t feel loved¨. I hear it because it is something I have said or thought many times over the years. There was something I was still missing and it was only recently that the revelation of that missing keys has come to me. I say keys, because there are in fact two things missing from this list. One is faith and the other is expectation.
Let´s look at expectation since it is the first thing I grasped that I had wrong. Where is your expectation? Mine was in the dump. I either didn´t expect anything at all or worse, expected only negative to return to me. I expected to get something from people that I should really be getting from God. No man (or woman) is capable of giving you what you truly need, selfless unconditional love without thought, or compromise. Only God can do and has done that by selflessly sending His Son to die in your place. I then realized expectation is not tied to feelings, though feelings can be tied to your unrealized expectations. I had to determine within myself that I was going to place the right expectation on God first and then my fellow man. I had to determine that I was going to stop expecting bad and start expecting good, and that blessings would come my way.
Once I determined this I was confronted with something I did not expect. Where my faith was. In order to allow myself to expect good from God I had to believe Him, and believe that He loved me. Surprise of all surprises I found out that I did not really believe that He was even capable of loving me. Imagine that! The God who formed me in my Mothers womb, who insures that all my days are written down, among a long list of things I have not enough time or room to include. Talk about contradiction! I could tell you and fully believed that the Bible was all true and that I believed it was, but when it got down to the details I never set myself to believe that God actually loved me.
Now, in order to not get off topic, or make this 4 pages long, I need to address one more thing without getting too detailed. My feelings played a huge role in what I believed, but should not have. I never felt that God loved me, therefore I did not believe He did. Conversely, when things went well, or I was in a good mood I was less likely to doubt His love, or maybe better put I was less likely to consider that He did not love me. So, in order to make the crooked straight I had to determine that my feelings were pretty much liars and should not be trusted over Biblical truth. Nor should I allow my life to be lead by feelings, for they are not the master of my life but can be an enjoyable part of it. It is the truth of God and His love that needs to be my master, setting the course for my life and how I live, act and react to people or circumstances in my life.
This started about love and I will end it with love. I do not feel I have fully grasped the all encompassing Love of God yet. I do believe it will take a life time to pursue and I will still not fully understand it, but I have determined to be determined in my pursuit of it. I know that even if I do not feel it, Gods love is still there for me and eventually in my pursuit my feelings will line up with the truth. And the truth is that I am His favourite child and that He truly does dance and sing over me!
The deal is, love is what our lives should be in pursuit of. Love is what our thoughts, meditations and lives should produce. But how can that happen when what we put in is junk? Everyone thinks the old adage ¨you are what you eat¨ only applies to food but it does not. Are we not told to EAT the bread of Life,daily? I´m sure I am not the only one who has heard that the Bible is Gods love letter to man. If we put the Word of God in,which is another expression of His love for us, then love is what should come out of us too. Yes it matters how much you and I put in.
Ever made pancakes with no baking power or baking soda? It produces flat pancakes. How about too much? Ever add too much? The pancakes expand and get full of lovely air bubbles making the fluffiest pancakes around! So fluffy that the syrup just soaks in deep becoming one with the pancake, instead of sitting on the top. Doesn´t Gods word work like the raising agent in pancakes? Add little or none to your daily life and the love He and others attempt to pour into you just doesn´t get absorbed! Being careful to add lots of Gods word into our daily lives, in reading, meditating, speaking, proclaiming and even praying back His word to Him makes your heart, your life soft and fluffy so that as God and others pour out their love you absorb it quickly! I have watched my kids do this, if you keep pouring on the sweet syrup eventually the pancake gets over saturated and what comes out when you poke it with your folk is syrup. That´s the result I want in my life. I know that right now I´m not at full saturation level, but it is the goal.I´m not the kind who likes to be left hanging without an action plan. I always disliked messages that told me what I was doing wrong but gave me no hope or plan to improve. So, I want to look at a few things I have been taught or learned in my life to put myself on the plate (to carry the pancake analogy just over the top). I mentioned a few practical things above that help prepare us to receive love. Reading Gods word, meditating or thinking about Gods word, speaking Gods word, yes out loud to yourself, proclaiming His word and promises over yourself and your circumstances, and even praying back His word to Him. These last two are often neglected.
Now I´m no fool. I can hear some of you say, ¨but I have done all that and I still don´t feel loved¨. I hear it because it is something I have said or thought many times over the years. There was something I was still missing and it was only recently that the revelation of that missing keys has come to me. I say keys, because there are in fact two things missing from this list. One is faith and the other is expectation.
Let´s look at expectation since it is the first thing I grasped that I had wrong. Where is your expectation? Mine was in the dump. I either didn´t expect anything at all or worse, expected only negative to return to me. I expected to get something from people that I should really be getting from God. No man (or woman) is capable of giving you what you truly need, selfless unconditional love without thought, or compromise. Only God can do and has done that by selflessly sending His Son to die in your place. I then realized expectation is not tied to feelings, though feelings can be tied to your unrealized expectations. I had to determine within myself that I was going to place the right expectation on God first and then my fellow man. I had to determine that I was going to stop expecting bad and start expecting good, and that blessings would come my way.
Once I determined this I was confronted with something I did not expect. Where my faith was. In order to allow myself to expect good from God I had to believe Him, and believe that He loved me. Surprise of all surprises I found out that I did not really believe that He was even capable of loving me. Imagine that! The God who formed me in my Mothers womb, who insures that all my days are written down, among a long list of things I have not enough time or room to include. Talk about contradiction! I could tell you and fully believed that the Bible was all true and that I believed it was, but when it got down to the details I never set myself to believe that God actually loved me.
Now, in order to not get off topic, or make this 4 pages long, I need to address one more thing without getting too detailed. My feelings played a huge role in what I believed, but should not have. I never felt that God loved me, therefore I did not believe He did. Conversely, when things went well, or I was in a good mood I was less likely to doubt His love, or maybe better put I was less likely to consider that He did not love me. So, in order to make the crooked straight I had to determine that my feelings were pretty much liars and should not be trusted over Biblical truth. Nor should I allow my life to be lead by feelings, for they are not the master of my life but can be an enjoyable part of it. It is the truth of God and His love that needs to be my master, setting the course for my life and how I live, act and react to people or circumstances in my life.This started about love and I will end it with love. I do not feel I have fully grasped the all encompassing Love of God yet. I do believe it will take a life time to pursue and I will still not fully understand it, but I have determined to be determined in my pursuit of it. I know that even if I do not feel it, Gods love is still there for me and eventually in my pursuit my feelings will line up with the truth. And the truth is that I am His favourite child and that He truly does dance and sing over me!
Originally written: March 6th, 2009
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