He asks us to LOVE....

God has been working in my heart in incredible ways over the past 12 months.  He has taken me to places I didn't quite know I could go.  He is challenging me ... STRETCHING me to think 'outside the box' in so many ways.  It is exciting, scary, hopeful, and incredibly crazy all at the same time... to take some very radical steps in the direction God is calling you to go.

As I spend time in His word, soaking up all that I can - I am amazed at the reoccuring theme... He LOVES ME!  I have grown up in church my whole life... singing the song "Jesus Loves Me This I Know"... but did I ever FULLY understand how MUCH He loves ME?  How often do we go through our day not stopping to think about what a gift each day is... how important every detail is to HIM!  I am realizing more and more that it truly is NOT ABOUT ME... but ALL ABOUT HIM.  Such a freeing feeling to refocus my thoughts and energy on ETERNAL things and not on all the 'stuff' I so easily get bogged down with.  It truly is a DAILY dying to myself and making much more of HIM and bringing HIM glory!

I have been doing alot of reading lately... Living Naked by Jeff Bogue, Radical by David Platt and now I am waist deep in Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  If you can read those books and not see anything in your life that needs to be completely changed....UNBELIEVEABLE!  I process and filter everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, completely different now.  'Things' have little importance to me ... serving, giving, loving.... mean everything.  I was hit between the eyes as I read chapter 5 this weekend.  Chan was pointing out that in 1 Corinthians 13:2-3 according to God we are here to LOVE.  There isn't really much else that matters.... God commands us to LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART... and to LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF... PERIOD!  That's it!

How many times have I heard that but not really stopped to process what that means?  Everything else falls away from those two commands.  As I read the following passage I was SO challenged.... is THIS what LOVE looks like in MY life?

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends....faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

... I would have to say I have a lot of work to do.  It is a DAILY pursuing of Christ!  I don't know where this journey will take our family, but I do know that God is moving in MIGHTY ways...