God Loved on Me

I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the fullness of God's love until I started this "Love Journey" study that our home church Senior Pastor had put out for our church family over the summer months. It's an eight-week study that makes you dig into God's Word daily, have you memorize Scripture passages weekly, and challenge you to act on specific "Love God" and "Love Others" commandments. I'm only on the second week but I'm learning so much and I'm getting so much blessing from His Word.

I wrote this blog a few years back, "Are You Loved?" But now I realize I do not have a good grasp of God's love, especially for me. That's probably the reason why I'm still having a hard time loving others. Oh, I sure do love my family and friends; but they're easy to love. How about the ones that aren't? Yesterday I had just a tiny, ittty-bitty, little sneak peak of God's love through someone I met only twice. Both meetings were "chance" meetings which I like to call, "divine appointments."

During our first meeting I had no idea who this person was but from our conversation, all I saw was God's love and truth flowing out of her. Like I could almost see them spilling over like an overflown cup. My life was forever changed. I was challenged to change my life into a walking-by-faith-not-by-sight life.

Yesterday, I was sharing something with her from my heart. I felt so confident and so mature-like. Her response was, "I don't want to talk about those, I want to talk about your life. I think what you just said was an attitude of spite. Until you bend down on your knees before God and your heart goes down too, God cannot work amazing things through you." Ouch! The rebuke I got was spoken in such love and compassion that I felt like I got spanked by the Heavenly Father but yet at the same time, I felt very much loved. If was a weird feeling. I didn't feel condemned or shamed. I just felt... LOVED!

As I was leaving the room and walking out in to the hallway, this "older" sister in Christ called out to me, "I love you!" I responded, "I love you, too!" And all of a sudden I felt this warmth all around my body and I was in tears.

You see, I learned shortly after our first meeting that this dear sister is of royal blood (literally, a royal descendant). She didn't look at me as a commoner and a foreigner in this country. She looked at me with equality through the royal blood of Jesus Christ. All I showed her was immaturity, lack of faith, and a judgmental attitude... amongst other things; but she saw past that.

God knew I needed that experience to make me have a visual picture of God's love, just to get a glimpse. Just a glimpse.

Noticed something in that picture above? There are lots of roses all around but the butterfly chose to land on the withered one and it sat there for a long time! I'm kind of like that rose - withered, ugly, ready to fall to the ground. But like the butterfly, God saw something in me, landed on me, and loved on me.

1 John 3:1, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!..."