ABIDE IN MY LOVE

There was a mirror I really wanted from Target.  It caught my eye a while back and I thought it would look perfect by our front door. But I just couldn't spend $24.95 on it, at least not at this junction in life when the expenses of settling into a new house and a new life in America continue to roll in.  Seriously, relocating is incredibly expensive.  And we are so blessed.  So abundantly blessed.  We have everything we need and much much MORE!   But anyway, back to the mirror.  I really liked it, but it just wasn't in our budget. So I passed it by.  Here's where the Lord gave me another object lesson....


You see, I  often function like an adopted orphan who can't receive love.   Have you ever seen a child who is incredibly loved but seems unable to receive that love? A child who thinks they are unloved is restless and insecure and often hurts others. I have been a lot like that.  For some reason, my heart has been hard both to God's love and to others as well.   There's a striving in me, that wants to earn love and can't just rest in the love already given to me.  I often pray, "God make me able to receive your love, and Andy's love and my parents' love for me."  Our hearts are bottomless when it comes to love and only the love of our Father can truly satisfy those parts of us.  It's the part that says, "Am I really significant?"  The answer is yes, because God has set his love upon us in Christ.  As my children's story book bible says, it's a "never stopping, never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love."  And when we really taste this kind of love we are changed at the core.  This love brings joy and freedom and  rest and makes you want to run like a child into the arms of your Father.  But for some reason, like an adopted child, my heart at times is hard to this love.  In the last couple of years, this love has finally been able to reach me...I've tasted deeply of this love but so often I find myself back to functioning like an orphan.  I keep looking for something other than God's love to fill those places.  And I keep striving, working, working make myself feel lovable.  Because of Christ, I am not an orphan.  I have been adopted.  But I often live like one, forgetting that I have a Father who loves me lavishly.  

In light of this, I think one of the main things God has been calling me to spend my energy on recently is to ABIDE in HIS LOVE.  Not to do more, but to abide.  I like to think of it has hiding or basking in his love or just crawling into his lap and sitting there.  One of my prayers recently has been, "God, I know you love me.  It's true.  Help me to abide in your love."  That's what Jesus tells us to do. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Abide in my love."  So I've been trying to abide in his love.  I memorize and meditate on scriptures about his heart for me. I find myself drawn back to the same passages of scripture that tell me of his love for me. (Psalm 103!!)  When I am soaring high with accomplishments for the day, I try to remind myself God does not love me more for these things.  When I am feeling low with failures of the day, I preach preach preach to myself that his love is set on me, no matter what I do or don't do.  And ultimately, it's the work of the Holy Spirit to help me abide in his love.  To help me receive it.   Like God promises in Zephaniah, He is "quieting me with his love".  A well loved child is secure and rests, there is no striving...their heart has been quieted.  God's spirit is at work quieting my heart. .  

That's where the mirror comes in.  You see, my relationship with my family is often a reflection of my relationship with God.  As my heart has often been hard to his love, it's the same with theirs.  So I have been trying to "think more" on the ways in which they  show love for me as well.  Trying to abide in their love.  It's a small earthly picture of the process I am going through with Jesus. 

Around the time this desire to abide in his love started to form in my heart, I saw that mirror I mentioned.  And also around the same time, my mom unexpectedly sent me a check for....you guessed it....25 dollars.  I knew almost immediately that I wanted to buy the mirror that cost 24.95.  And then it hit me.  The mirror I wanted to buy was in the shape of a sunshine. And my mom has always called me her sunshine.  ALWAYS.  So I knew that buying the mirror would me a reminder of her love for me.  First of all, a reminder that she generously gave me money to buy something for myself...A very real reminder of her heart for me.  She loves me "this much"...that she would generously give of her own money to bless me.  And the fact that the mirror was in the shape of a sunshine is a constant reminder of her view of me.  She delights in me, and I bring joy and brightness into her life.  So it's a reminder of both her heart for me and her view of me.  A tangible, hanging on the wall, every day reminder of her love for me.  Buying that mirror was my way of abiding in her love. 

And God wants me to do the same with him.  He wants me to plaster his love all over my life so that I am reminded day in and day out of his never stopping, never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love.  His heart is for me and he gives me good gifts to show it.  The best of those is his son, given to live a perfect life and die an agonizing death in payment for my sin so that I can call him Daddy.  And when I look at that gift each and every day, I am reminded that he loved me "this much!"  and I am reminded of his view of me.  He sees me as his beloved child.  In Christ, I am his sunshine, and he truly delights in me.

The reminder of my mom's love is one I could not afford on my own.  She has loved me from the moment she knew me and she delights to give me reminders of that love...but I could not afford that reminder.  It came unexpectedly, and on her own initiative and it hangs there shooting arrows at my heart each day, saying, "I love you this much!"  And God's ultimate reminder of his love for me, the cross, came at great cost to himself.  You see, he "loved me and gave himself up for me."  The cross is both the payment and the reminder all wrapped into one. 

What's amazing to me is that as this process of enjoying (abiding in) his love for me happens, the natural response is praise.  And those are the two reasons we were created...to enjoy God and glorify him.  As I enjoy him (abide), I want to praise him for his love and kindness shown to me!  Thank you God that you loved me "this much!!"    Ephesians says that God saved us and set his love on us, " in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."  His heart is so good and he wants to put his kindness on display so we can see it and enjoy it.  And I as I abide in his kindness, I become a worshipper.  

So these days, I'm staying close to the cross, his best gift and looking there to see his heart for me.  I'm praying that God's spirit will make his love flood my heart in ways I have never known before.  I'm coming back over and over to scriptures that speak of his love...and each time I glance at that mirror, I want to be reminded to look at the cross and abide.