The entirety of this blog is an attempt to call out the importance of God’s Love and why we most definitely need it.
Three things remain: Faith, Hope, Love – yetthe greatest of these is LOVE.
1 Corinthians 13:13
Recently, and somewhat casually, the HolySpirit said to me: Ask Abba to love you with all He’s got. It took me a minute to process what I had just been told … even the possibility of it made my brain pause! …
… what doesALLmean for a God Who is inexhaustible!
The anticipation of it made my heart skip several beats leap!
In obedience and with sheer excitement, I asked God to love me with ALL He’s got!
Full disclosure … I was almost certain I’d explode BUT I asked anyway because I was (still am) absolutely confident that the HolySpirit will put me back together again should it happen!
A quick side note: I have a growing suspicion that I’ve exploded many times over and that the HolySpirit keeps putting me back together! What can I say … God excites me! … and evidently, He enjoys it. 🙂
Back to the topic at hand …
… with the understanding that no one can take on ALL of God, the HolySpirit assured me that He’ll help me bear it. 🥰
In Ephesians 3, Paul prayed saying …
… that you may be strong, fully capable, and empowered to comprehend and take the experience of God’s love– the length, breadth, height, and depth of it!
Ephesians 3:17B-18
For a long time (until maybe last year), I read this wondering why I need Strength … why do I need to be empowered to know and experience the Love of God.
Truthfully, it takes God’s Strength or God-given Strength (the HolySpirit) to know, take on, and experience the POWERFUL, universe-creating, EXTRAVAGANT LOVE that is God!
This brings me to Romans 5:5– a bible verse that I’ve come to thoroughly relish!
Hope (in God) does not delude or disappointBECAUSE God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His Love.
Romans 5:5
With the revelation that (1) the HolySpirit is the Grace of God and that (2) the Grace of God is sufficient,Romans 5:5could have stopped at because God has given us the HolySpirit … but it didn’t.
Also, it could have said because God loves us – this by the way is the foundation and essence of the gospel of Christ:God does love us sooooo very much. While this is undeniably true, Romans 5:5 doesn’t say this either. John 3:16 does 🥰.
It appears then that the use of language/words in Romans 5:5 was purposefully and deliberately structured to lay emphasis on the pouring of God’s Love and the filling of our hearts with God’s Love by the HolySpirit. To mean that, in addition to being passionately loved by God, we need God’s love in us <—— THIS is primarily what I’d like to call attention to.
Having learnt that if God gives it, we most definitely need it, it is apt to say that the pouring of God’s Love in our hearts is imperative. In other words, God’s Love in our hearts is a must-have!
Eagerly pursue and seek to acquire this Love as if your life depended on it – because it does.
1 Corinthians 14:1A(AMPC, MSG)
WHY should we make it our highest goal to have God’s Love in us?
Short answer …BECAUSE our lives depend on it.
HOW do our lives depend on it?
I’m hoping that the Love Connections outlined below will enable you arrive at a truth-based answer that’s personal to you.
Let’s get the ball rolling …
The Love of God in us is God’s power at work in us and it avails much!
By the action of His power that is at work in us,God does superabundantly, far over and above all that we dare ask or think … infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams
Ephesians 3:20
El Shaddai!🥰 The Inexhaustible One! The All-Sufficient One!
He IS EVERYTHING we need and infinitely MORE! He IS The MORE!
The riches of His abundance are without borders … unending and bottomless!
With Him, there is NO WHAT IF there isn’t enough to go round or enough left for me.
He IS undepletable – impossible to deplete! El Shaddai is His Name! 💖
In addition to this MORE-than-ANYTHING-you-can-DARE-to-ask-or-think blank cheque or black card,the Love of God leads to HOPE– one of the three must-haves called out in 1 Corinthians 13:13…
… because of this Love-based Hope, we are never left feeling short-changed. On the contrary, we can NOT round up enough containers to hold everything God so generously pours into our lives through the HolySpirit –Romans 5:5 (MSG).
By extension, this means that if all 7+ billion of us were to let God pour Himself (LOVE) into us … that’s 7+ billion containers … it still will NOT be enough to hold everything God wants us to have!
I’m very tempted to change the title of this blog to El Shaddai! … this right here is one of those moments where I’m almost certain I exploded and the Holy Spirit put me back together again! I’ll try to stay on track. 🙂
Here’s an outline of the connection between God’s Love and a few other must-haves.
From the above depiction, we see thatGod’s LOVE leads to PEACE which in turn leads to and is STRENGTH and COURAGE (the absence of fear).
If we pause to consider the extensive benefits of peace, strength, courage, and hope in our lives, we’ll catch a glimpse of the truth that the Love of God leads to all the must-haves we need and as such it is the greatest must-have of ALL.
Thankfully, God has made it ALL available to us …
God’s divine power (LOVE) has made available to us absolutely everything necessary for LIFEand godliness …
2 Peter 1:3A
How has God made all the must-haves (including His Love) available to us?
Through His SpiritWho pours God’s Love into our hearts.
How does the HolySpirit pour God’s Love into our hearts?
By telling and reminding us of the Word of God.
When the Spirit of Truth comes … He will speak only what He hears from the Father.
John 16:13
… He will teach you everything and will remind you of every word that I have told you.
John 14:26
Depicted below is anotherLove Connectionthat shows the link between LOVE (God),THE WORD OF GOD (God), andLIFE (God).
In other words, God’s Love is LIFE … this Life is the Light of all mankind. John 1:4
By telling and reminding us of God’s Word to, for, and regarding us, the HolySpirit reveals God’s heart to us and (in essence) pours God’s Love into our hearts.
How do we receive the inpouring of God’s Love into our hearts?
With humility
… receive and welcomewith humilitythe Word of God which is implanted and rooted in your hearts …
James 1:21B
What does it mean to receive with humility?
To receive solely on the basis that God gave it – no more, no less.
To receivewithoutany self-based orientation.
To receive with zero correlation, link, or connection to what we did or did not do, how well we did or didn’t do … whether or not we think or feel we are deserving …
… not even fears related to our experience of love. ZERO self-based orientation.
From a recent personal experience, I learnt and can unreservedly say that Adam and Eve were naked yet unafraid and unashamed BECAUSE of God’s Love – they lived and basked in it. It was poured into their hearts and they received it with all humility.
How so?
BEFORE eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they did NOT know that they were naked (knowing that one is naked involves some level of self orientation). All they knew and received was God (LOVE) – this in turn cast out all fears hence, they were unafraid.
In my somewhat similar experience, I saw a side of me that was not … God-like. Thanks to the Love of God that the HolySpirit continues to pour into my heart, I heard the whisper:
“Let yourself be vulnerable with God.“
I went to God and laid my heart bare before Him. I was vulnerable – admitting my weakness and exposing it to the Light, yet I was unashamed. Like Adam and Eve (in Genesis 2:25), I was naked and exposed yet unafraid or unashamed solely because of the Love of God … a LOVE that results in a PEACE that truly is beyond all natural understanding.
Our natural understanding, which represents a form of darkness or blindness, can NOT comprehend or make sense of the Love of God (Light). Thankfully, the Word of God is the Voice of Love – the Voice that pierces through all forms of darkness.
Our natural understanding, similar to that of Adam and Eve after eating of the tree, is self-oriented and tends to fear i.e. the fear of being punished, being rejected, or any number of WHAT-IFs … it also results in fear-based responses or actions including being fearfully responsible – SeLaH.
Nevertheless, the Love of God encourages us to BELIEVE and NOT give in to fear.
Do not be afraid;ONLY believe
Mark 5:36
Believing God is a practical example of receiving with humility.
Believing God is a form of self-surrender.
It involves laying aside all self-based orientation – what we think, feel, see, etc. It involves yielding our hearts to the truth of God’s Word which, as noted earlier, is the voice of God (Love).
ONLY the truth of God’s Love for and in us can utterly dispel all fears and fear-based responses. It’s a LOVE that choses MERCYover (and in) judgement.
… for with judgement comes the promise of salvation …
Isaiah 9:1(AMP)
It’s a LOVE that says: Let ME love you
In other words, “Let ME in and I will show you ME. To know ME is to know LOVE“
Those who trustGod’s action in themfind that God’s Spirit is in them – living and breathing God!
Romans 8:5B(MSG)
The Love of God in us is God’s action in us. His action in us is what leads to actively and interactively knowing Him <——THIS is LIFE …
… a Life that can ONLY be experienced by knowing Him (God, LOVE) personally.
God’s divine power has made available to us absolutely everything necessary for LIFE and godliness,through the full and personal knowledge of HimWho called us by and to His own glory and excellence.
2 Peter 1:3
God wants us to have and enjoy Him (Life) hence the outpouring of His Love – better put, the outpouring of Himself (Love) – into our hearts.
For everyone who is willing, you wanting to let God’s Love in your heart is evidence that God put the desire there. This reinforces the truth that He wants you to have and enjoy Him (Love, Life).
In alignment with God’s heart, I echo Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:19that you come to know the Love of God personally and that you become fully filled with Love (God).
In other words, I pray that you become God-FULL … Love-FULL … FULL of Life!
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Rivers in the Desert 
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