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Dear Friends:

Someone once asked an elderly Scottish woman how she spent her days. This was her answer: ‘I get my hymnbook and sing. Then I get the Bible and let the Lord speak to me. When I get tired of reading and cannot sing anymore, I just sit still and let the Lord love me.”

Have you ever just sat still and let God love you? This may sound strange to some of us, but receiving God’s love is the most important thing we can do with the human life God has given. Knowing that He loves us, really knowing it, will absolutely transform the way we look at the world around us, it will invigorate our spiritual lives, and it will make us usable servants in the Kingdom of God.

Why do I think that is true? Because, if we don’t simply allow ourselves to be in God’s presence and receive His love, we begin to doubt the truth of His affection for us. Instead, we tend to measure how much God loves us by the condition of our lives. If we are struggling with sickness or financial setbacks or relational stresses, we think that God must not love us. And as we observe others who are healthy, wealthy, and surrounded by friends and family, we think that God must love them very much. When we do that, we are evaluating God’s love in all the wrong ways.

When we place ourselves in God’s presence, we stop looking at our lives and at the lives of those around us and we look, instead, to God. As we do that, we are able to experience His love as a generous, overflowing gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul says it this way,

“God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:5b)

It’s not just a trickle or sprinkling of love. It is a love waterfall poured into our hearts. This verse indicates that the love of God is delivered by the Holy Spirit. And we know from other passages of Scripture that the Holy Spirit’s work is most often activated by prayer. So prayer is the means by which we can experience the incredible love that God has for us.

How does prayer open us to God’s love?

First, as we pray, the Holy Spirit will assure us of forgiveness. Humanly, we doubt God’s love because we know that we are unworthy of it. We carry guilt that becomes a barrier to our ability to receive God’s love. Through prayer, we confess sins and experience the cleansing that is promised in I John 1:9,

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9).

Once we are clean, we are ready to understand that God’s love does not depend on our worthiness. The Holy Spirit helps us to realize that God’s love is uncaused and undeserved. No matter what we do, we cannot stop God from loving us. And no matter how good we are, we cannot make Him love us more than He does right now. His love for us flows out of who He is, not out of who we are. And because of that unstoppable love, He provides a way to get rid of our guilt which blocks our receiving His love. Once the guilt is gone, the love can flow freely into our hearts.

Second, as we pray, we begin to sense how much God takes pleasure in us. He likes us. He expresses affection toward those who seek Him and follow His will. When we really know and believe that God wants to be with us, we will naturally want to be with Him. And as we spend time with Him, we sense His pleasure. It feels good to be wanted, to be accepted, and to be loved. And it especially feels good to know that the one who loves us most is the one who created us in His image for the purpose of relationship. When we receive God’s love and love Him in return, we are fulfilling the purpose for which He made us in the first place.

Once we begin to experience the great and unchangeable love God has for us, our prayers change. It no longer feels like an obligation to spend time in prayer. We love being with Him. We can’t wait to sit in His presence and bask in the warmth of His love for us. We begin our days praying, as Moses did when he said,

“Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:14)

Third, love wants to give. Giving is often the way in which God expresses His love toward us. He wants to answer our prayers, to meet our needs, and to act on behalf of those He loves. God is able to do anything for us that He knows would be in our best interest, but because He is a lover and not a vending machine, He wants us to ask Him for what we need. So, He invites us to come, to enjoy Him, to talk to Him, and to share with Him the most urgent needs in our lives and the deepest needs of our hearts. He wants to hear from us and He wants to respond. There are many things God would do for us, I am certain, if we, out of a love-relationship with Him, simply asked Him to act on our behalf.

The bottom line is this: There is nothing more important in our walk with God than knowing that He loves us. It has to be a heart knowing, not a head knowing. We have to experience the love of God. But we will never be the same once we truly grasp the depth, sureness, and totality of God’s love for us.

Paul’s desire for the early Christians was that they be firmly established in their faith. He knew that would happen only when they understood the extent of Christ’s love for them. He expresses it this way,

“. . . that you . . . may have power . . . to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” (from Ephesians 3:17-18)

We cannot fully measure God’s love for us, as it was expressed in Jesus Christ, but once we even begin to understand its wonderfulness, once we know we can count on it no matter what, we, Paul says, can

“be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19b).

Do we want God to fill us up? To take over our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our purpose? Then, we need to believe that God loves us and then receive His love, bathe in it, and enjoy and wonder at its greatness. Even if God never answered one of our prayer requests, knowing and receiving His love would be enough all by itself!

My prayer is that, as we make a fresh start in a new year, we will begin with exploring and experiencing the inexpressible and incredible love of God. Just sit and let Him love you. You will be amazed!

Sitting beside you,

Bev
http://www.beverlyvankampen.com