Are You Living Fully In God’s Love?

Ps. 136:26 “Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.”
What would your life look like if you lived fully in the love of God?
How would God’s love change your life, your work, and your friendships?
When we know the love of God,
when we realize how fully He holds us,
when we understand how intimately He knows our tiniest thought or fear,
it fundamentally changes us from the feeling of needing to be known, heard, understood, or seen,
to content in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is all of those things to us and meets every one of our needs.
I’ve noticed a pattern in life that plays out wherever people are present: in families, communities, churches, and on social media.
People crave relationships. They want to be seen and heard. They want to be accepted and approved.
When people believe that they lack relationships (or a certain relationship), friendship (or enough friendship), community (especially when they feel lonely), approval (especially when they feel misunderstood, unaccepted, or unlovely) they do funny things.
- They’ll over-share or over-protect.
- They’ll fight for the spotlight or hide in the shadows.
- They’ll pout when they don’t get what they think is their due or explode when they are crossed.
- They’ll second guess people who don’t live up to their expectations or accuse those who don’t play by their rules.
- They’ll punish the person they think is the perpetrator of their unhappiness and try to remove the person they believe is the barrier to their progress.
In short, they are emotionally unhealthy and spiritually anemic and the symptoms of feeling unloved show up in emotional instability, swinging from the pendulum of seeking attention to withdrawing in self-protection.
But as women who believe God’s Word and know God’s love, our lives should reflect that security in our everyday interactions.
God’s love fundamentally transforms our every action, mundane moments, our highlights, our interactions, our words, and even our motives.
Women who know the steadfast love of God are peacefully stable and unperturbed at the unrest all around them.
God’s steadfastly loved women:
- rest in God’s sovereignty.
- know that God will meet their needs. They don’t have to take matters into their own hands.
- reach out. They know God’s love and spread it to others.
- don’t need the approval or attention of others. They are free to notice and advance other’s positions and causes.
- are at peace. They don’t need their ego stroked. They are free to encourage others.
- don’t dwell on the negative because God’s love gives so much hope to their day.
- don’t find themselves in unhealthy relationships, because they know the difference between love and co-dependency.
- do initiate friendships whether they are reciprocated or not because their inherited nature is to love like their Father and reach out.
- do not expect too much of others knowing we are all dust, but “loved dust.”
- walk confidently in their calling knowing that God leads and gives them the opportunities they have.
- don’t allow the corrupt words of others to devastate them, because hurtful words can’t stick in the presence of such great Love.
- walk with the wise because they wise know and value the love of God and there is community and fellowship there.
- are self-controlled and fulfilled because they have all their needs met in Christ, and don’t run to extremes or over-indulge in counterfeit “comforts” like food, drink, shopping, binge watching, etc..
Where do you find yourself today?
Are you living in the light of God’s love? Has it changed your life?
Or do you see tendencies to live as though you have to fight for yourself and take matters into your own hands?
Friend, if you have trusted Christ as your Savior, and you’ve believed His Word as truth, and find yourself struggling today, do a quick study on the love of God. See it’s depths and heights. See the lengths that God took for you. Don’t settle for fake comforts that won’t satisfy. Rest in His love.
Thank you for this. It’s the second time this morning that I have been reminded of my lack of self-control . The first was reading “Man does not live by bread alone”, now this. I can give up sweets a lot easier that I can give up my homemade bread…and I do overindulge. I thank the Lord for this reminder that He is sufficient.