In Jesus Calling it says, as if God was talking to us,

“I want you to live increasingly from your center, where My love has an eternal grip on you.”

What a wonderful thought! God wants us to live IN and FROM His LOVE. We must receive His Love for us!

This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love. 1 John 4:13-18 MSG  

We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love he has for us. 1 John 4:16 TPT

Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it! Colossians 1:27 TPT  

I’ve been thinking a lot about love, specifically God’s love for us, for me, for you. I’ve been reading about God’s love, meditating on it, practicing living from it, choosing the transforming mystery of HIS LOVE. I want to understand LOVE better, live more fully from it, be centered in it, and share it with others well.

As I think about Love, I’ve also been thinking about the idea of receiving Love.

Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that they will receive that love from you, they may not even be able to because of their own issues. All I can do is offer love, I cannot make someone receive it, accept it, appreciate it, or reciprocate it. And that can be tough. 

I like Brené Brown’s definition of love…

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.” 

We must know love, accept love, and receive love for ourselves. We generate love by thinking loving thoughts. We choose to have loving thoughts about ourselves. We choose to have loving thoughts about others. We choose to believe in God’s love for us. We choose tell ourselves what God says about us.

We must know God’s love for us, deep inside, to be able to offer love well to others. 

We cannot give something to others that we don’t have ourselves.

We MUST spend time with God to know His LOVE. 

If we want to be changed, transformed, in any area of our life, then we must prioritize spending time sitting with Jesus, talking to Jesus, listening to Jesus, reading, studying, and meditating on His Word, falling more in Love with Him. Asking Him for what we need, telling Him where we want to experience His transforming work in our lives. We do the work. We come to Him willing and surrendering. We seek Him and rely on Him to equip, enable, and empower us. Believing He will provide the answers, the help, whatever we need. As we do the work, God expands our capacity, takes us to new places of His Freedom, Joy, Peace, and Hope.

As we sit in God’s love, He may reveal to us that we need to let go of some of the expectations we have of ourselves. We have to practice accepting how He made us, who we are, maybe even have to learn to like ourselves, and where we are in life. (Trusting that He loves us just as we are. He made us. There is nothing wrong with us and nothing has gone wrong in our lives. We must trust He is working all things out for our good and His glory.) We have to practice having self-compassion. We have to practice loving ourselves. He may reveal to us any number of things that are hindering us from experiencing His love. We have to clean-up those things in our lives as He reveals them to us, to get to a better more loving place.

It may feel unpleasant, but the work is worth it! (Now all discipline seems to be more pain than pleasure at the time, yet later it will produce a transformation of character, bringing a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who yield to it. Hebrews 12:11 TPT)

I think Love looks like accepting ourselves as we are, broken and flawed humans redeemed by the blood of Jesus, PRAISE! We are both sinner and saint accepted by a loving and gracious God!

I think Love looks like celebrating how and who I am! As I am right now, not thinking I have to become something different to be loved. Receiving, I am God’s Beloved! You are God’s Beloved!

I think Love looks like accepting other people as they are. No expectations. No “manual” of how they should be. 

I think Love looks like celebrating how and who other people are! As they are right now, not thinking they have to become something different to be loved. Allowing them to be who they are. Not thinking we know what they should or should not be doing. Choosing to think the best thoughts about them and believe the best for them. Trusting that God is working all the things in their lives together for their good and His glory.

We may not have grown up in a family that loved well, or taught us how to love well, or that may have used the word “love” but not shown Christ-like unconditional Love. We must ask God to help us to learn and understand what love, His Love, looks like, receive His Love for ourselves, and then know how to share it well with others.

Love is a skill we practice and get better at! Practice love. Practice receiving love. Practice giving love. And feel love!

Ask yourself, how do I feel loved? What is loving to me? How would I want someone to show up with love for me? Then go and do that for someone else.

“Heavenly Father, may the eyes of our hearts be enlightened to see Your love towards us, as we never have before. Pour out Your love on us from the fullness of Your glorious and inexhaustible riches, that Christ may dwell in our hearts and strengthen us with power to grasp just how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ — so expansive that we can’t escape it, so extensive that we can’t exhaust it. May we be deeply rooted and established in Your love, growing to know Jesus’ love not just in our minds but in our experiences. May Your love fill us to the measure of the fullness of God, overflowing into the lives of those You have placed in our lives for this very time and purpose. Thank You for doing immeasurably more than we can even imagine right now through Your Spirit’s power at work in us, all for Your glory in Jesus Christ for all eternity. Amen.” (Prayer based on Ephesians 3:16-21) From Uncovering the Love of Jesus: A Lent Devotional by Asheritah Ciuciu