Greetings my friend! I pray when you are reading my blog, that you are sensing the love of the Lord in your life. ‘Sensing the love of the Lord’ is a phrase so commonly used by Christians (myself included) that if we are not careful, those words can lose their significance, their worth to us.

When asked by one of the teachers of the law which commandment was the most important, Jesus replies in Mark 12:29-31 “The most important one is this: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than this.” We go on to read that the teacher of the law agrees that Jesus was right in saying God is One and there is no other but Him and to love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love our neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (just a side note here, it is always wise for us to agree with whatever Jesus is saying) When Jesus heard this teacher of law had answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Please understand, to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is not an option for those who call Jesus their Lord and Savior; in fact we just read where Jesus said it is part of the greatest commandment.

I’ve often wondered why at times I find it difficult to love the Lord in the way He has commanded me to do; is that the same for you? The last few weeks the Lord has been taking me down what I would call, a new insight on the path of love. To be a little more specific, the Lord has been revealing to me what it meant to my Christian walk to ‘know’ that the Lord loves me. Love is I believe the most beautiful expression for anyone to ever experience. We all have our first love, our love for our family, our love for our spouses, our love for our friends, our love for our church, our love for the lost, (did I mention our love for chocolate cake, oops I got off track a bit) Though I know this is only a partial list of the things we can love, it is also sadly true that our love can and does decline at times in our life or worse than that, it can even vanish. Amazingly, we even have the ability to hold back our love if we so choose to do so.

The Lord has revealed to me that if I were to first get a small grip on the truth that the ‘Lord loves me’, I would have more success in loving Him. Notice I said ‘get a small grip on the truth that the Lord loves me.’ Psalm 36:7 “How ‘priceless’ is Your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings.” One of my favorite TV shows is, Antique Roadshow. On this show, people bring stuff they think is just junk, stuff they’ve had stored away in their attic or in a box; stuff they’ve bought at a garage sale or was passed down in the family, only to happily discover that sometimes the stuff they thought was just stuff, suddenly had great monetary value to it. Every so often, someone will bring in something the appraiser will say is ‘priceless’, in other words, worth very much. Let me ask you, how ‘priceless’ is the truth that the Lord Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, the One who spoke the stars into place and knows them by name, the One who know the number of hairs you have on your head (or not) to name a few, ‘loves you’ so very much?

Jesus says in John 15:9 “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.” Earlier I said if we could get a small grip on the truth that the Lord loves us, we would have more success in loving the Lord. Jesus said ‘As’ the Father has loved Him. I don’t know about you but I can’t even begin to imagine how great the ‘Father’s love’ is for His Son Jesus; in fact I think it is impossible to even try and comprehend that kind of great love. Jesus says ‘As’ (in the same way) the Father has loved Him; in other words, with that same kind of unfathomable, incomprehensible love, so has ‘He loved us.’

My dear friend, if you have been struggling lately in expressing your love to the Lord, I suggest you take some time and focus on the truth that the Lord loves you with a love that is ‘unfailing’ as the Scripture says. As you do that, I believe the Lord will begin to open your eyes, as He has mine, to a fresh view of His love ‘for you’. When that takes place, your times of worship will become fresh and alive again, When you read His Word, His truth will begin to jump out from the pages to you. You will look at your enemies in a much different way. Your joy will be made new and where you have grown weary, you will experience fresh new strength!!! He loves you and me my friend!!! There is no greater truth than that for our life; so begin to enjoy it 🙂