Engulfed in love                                                                                                                                        Enraptured in light                                                                                                                             Consumed                                                                                                                                                    One with Him                                                                                                                                             Union                                                                                                                                                       Delight

“…God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him…There is no fear in love” 1 John 4:16,18 NKJV

“Abide in me, and I in you…Abide in my love!” John 15:4, 9 ESV

“…the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life” Ephesians 3:17 TPT

“Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him” 1 John 4:7 TPT

“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” Ephesians 3:19 NLT

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous…God’s seed abides in Him…He has been born of God” 1 John 3:1,7,9 ESV

“Love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God…God is love” 1 John 4:7 ESV

“We love because He first loved us” 1 John 4:19 NIV

Everything comes back to love. As I follower of Jesus, I love because He first loved me. All of the law and the prophets depend on two commandments (Matthew 22:40). “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Matthew 22:37-40 ESV. My journey with God has been one of coming to intimately know Him as a good Father and as love. His love for me and His delight in me, showed me the beauty of who He created me to be. His love engulfed me showing me who I was as His daughter, empowering me to overflow with His love everywhere I go. I became aware that God is love and my purpose comes from being in union with Him. The scripture shares that this union is like a great mystery, often the closest picture of this oneness comes from a marriage union. Paul writes about this in Ephesians 5, “…a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying it refers to Christ and the church” Ephesians 5:31-32 ESV. Matthew even shares how in marriage they are no longer two but one flesh (Matthew 19:6 ESV). This paints a picture of our union with God, our oneness with Him being rooted in His love.

My journey brought me out of religion into the love and light of Jesus. Over the last few years God has been branding me with a deeper revelation of His love. I have spent time studying His words and the scriptures on love would seem to leap off the pages into my heart. The words began to be engraved on my heart, becoming a part of me. The love of Jesus has marked me. The revelation of His love has changed the whole lens of how I view God. Jesus said if we love Him, we will keep His commands (John 15:10). When I read this, I asked in my heart, what are your commands God? I kept reading in John 15, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:12-13 NKJV). Again, in 1 John 2:3,5 the scripture reads, “Now by this we know Him, if we keep His commandment whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have heard from the beginning…” If you keep reading John elaborates, “This is the message you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. By this we know love, because He laid down his life for us” 1 John 3:11,16 NLT. “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He has given us” 1 John 3:23-24 NIV. The foundation of everything is love (Matthew 22:40). His Spirit in us empowers us to walk in His love and teaches us our identity in Him. When we know who we are, we walk differently. His Spirit dwells in us and helps us to love (John 14:15-17). I still am only scratching the surface of the heights and depths and widths of His love. I will continue my whole life diving deeper into the rivers of His love. My prayer is to abide in Him forever.

David had this prayer in Psalms 27:4, “The one thing I ask of the Lord- the thing I seek most- is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in His temple.” Thanks be to God, that through Jesus we are now able to dwell in Him all the days of our lives. We no longer have to go to a temple to meet with God, when Jesus rose from the dead the veil tore in two giving us access to come boldly before His throne (Matthew 27:51, Hebrews 4:16). Jesus now makes His home in our hearts. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in and eat with Him, and he with me” Revelation 3:20. Jesus stands knocking on the door and longs for us to open our hearts to Him and invite Him in. In John 14:23 Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to make our home with Him.” In this passage, Jesus was talking about how He would send His Spirit to teach us everything and remind us of everything He told us (John 14:26). He did not leave us alone, when He rose from the dead. He actually declared it was better for Him to go away, so His Spirit would come. When we are born again and born of God, he makes us new. We are born of His Spirit (John 3:5-7). His seed of righteousness comes on the inside of us, and we start to produce fruit after this seed (Genesis 1:11). This seed produces fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self- control (Galatians 5:22). When we are led by the Spirit we are no longer under the law (Galatians 5:18). Jesus came out of love, God so loved the world, so He sent Jesus to bring life and restoration (John 3:16). We come out of the old covenant of sin and death into a new covenant. Paul writes, “Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. We are confident of all of this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. He has enabled us to be ministers of His new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life” 2 Corinthians 3:4-7. “…this new way gives us such confidence, we can be very bold…all of us who have had the veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord, And the Lord- who is the Spirit- makes us more and more like him as we are changed into His glorious image!” 2 Corinthians 3:12, 17-18.

Thanks be to God that through Jesus He made a way for us to be free (Romans 7:25)! We are no longer slaves to the law and sin! We belong to Jesus! “And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death (Romans 8:2 NLT). We come into union with God through Jesus! He restores our relationship and intimacy with God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light. No one could come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). He became a bridge, restoring us to the Father. Those who follow and believe in Jesus, are born of God! We are born of love! His light floods through us, making us new. He makes us righteous. The Spirit of God comes and lives in us (John 3:5-7)! We are brought into a family, the kingdom of God and given a new identity as sons and daughters (John 1:12)! We learn to yield to His Spirit and His love annihilates fear! “His Spirit joins with our Spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs, In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must share His suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing to the glory that will be revealed” (Romans 8:16-18 NLT).

Jesus stands at the door of our hearts and knocks, inviting us into a deeper place of union. He wants us to fully invite Him in and surrender our lives to Him. The call is for us to die, become one with him, and hidden in Him (Colossians 3:3). All who give up their lives, will find new life in Him (Matthew 10:39). He is life. He is love. The only way to be full of love, is to become one with Him. His love empowers us to love deeply. This love goes beyond human capacity to love. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. His love helps us to look beyond the physical reality into the heavens (Colossians 3:1-3). He teaches us to come up higher and see His heart in each person as an image bearer of God (2 Corinthians 5:14-17). We were created in God’s image and God will help us to see the seed of Him in each person, so we can love them through His eyes. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy; but Jesus He came to bring life (John 10:10). The love of Jesus breaks down barriers of hostility and hate, because His love covers all of that. “…He is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14 ESV). Why, because God is rich in mercy and love. His plan was to raise us to new life and seat us with Him in the heavenly realms in Jesus! (Ephesians 2:4-6).

I fully believe the radical love of Jesus is what will turn the hearts of others toward Him. This love is unfailing and covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). Love is our highest call to pursue (1 Corinthians 14:1). Love is the most excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31; 13). We are called to put on love above all else (Colossians 3:14). The only way to love in this way is to be consumed by love itself, Jesus. May prayer for you is that you would come to a deeper revelation and understanding of His love. May His love be the source and root of your life. “…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19). May you be engulfed in His love, and may your eyes be open to light you carry, and who you are in Him. When we remain in union with Him, we realize who we are as His children. When we know are identity, we can ask anything in His name, and it will be done. We bear fruit from the seed in us, which is peace, love, joy… (Galatians 5:6). However, we must learn to come out of striving into remaining in His love, so we stay in Him and in His joy (John 15:7-11). From this place of abiding, we are able to love as He loved us. My prayer is for each of us to align with love and who we are as children of God. In His love there is no fear. We carry the seeds of light in us as His lovers (Psalms 97:11). May we all continue to understand deeper this love poured out through Jesus. He stands at the door and knocks. He longs for us to open the door to Him so He can fill our hearts with His liquid love. “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” “He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love” (Romans 5:5 NIV, NLT).