God is love

this weekend, we headed out of town again. this time it is for a baseball tournament in danville, il. it only took two hours to get there. jacob was wonderful on this trip. we were all so glad about that. josiah, my oldest son is our baseball player. i love to support him as he enjoys the talents that God has blessed him with. we had a great weekend.

i wanted to sum up my thoughts from the "fearless" conference that i went to last weekend with this post today. for any of you who may have missed it, i have been posting a little each day, since monday, about what God was speaking there and how it has ministered to me and my family. and if you have not stopped to check out because of Jesus ministries or lifestream ministries, please do so. you will be so blessed by what they have to offer.

i was so honored and privileged to be able to speak at this conference as well. God lead me to speak on I John 4:16 and Ephesians 1:4. it was a real pleasure to lean on Him and allow Him to speak through me. i pray that many people's lives were touched as much as mine was by the other speakers.

knowing that the theme for the conference was "fearless" and the main Scripture was I John 4:18, "perfect love casts out all fear," i felt the Lord leading me to speak on what perfect love was and how we miss so much of what He has to offer us because we do not understand the intensity or the quality of His love for us. i think there are several reasons for that. one, is because we only understand love to the degree that we have experienced it or have given it and we associate our understanding of love with God. when we hear that God loves us, we think He loves like we do, with conditions and expectations. but, God's love is perfect agape' love defined as; chosen, self sacrificial action and acceptance given without conditions or expectations of anything in return, a love that is always looking to move on behalf of the one that is beloved, never self serving, and always acting on behalf of who He is. it is unending and unfailing. it is not the human kind of love that has to be returned in order to continue.

another reason it is hard for us to understand God's love is because we have an enemy who tries his hardest to keep us from really knowing and believing the kind of love that God has for us. he deceived eve in the garden by convincing her that God really did not love her as much as He said that He did and that He was really holding something back from her that was wonderful. he is a liar! the only thing God was holding back was the destruction of sin. the enemies lies are still the same. he is still trying to convince us that God is not thoroughly in love with us and might not be there for us when we need Him. deception! it is the only tool he has to use on us anymore.

I john 4:16 tells us, "God is love." that is who God is. the entirety of who God is. everything He does or says is the result of who He is. the absence of love is sin. we could say that God is righteous because God is love! God is holy because God is love! God is awesome because God is love! if God ceased to love, He would cease to be. to understand this is to know that everything that God thinks and acts toward us is originated out of His love for us. Ephesians 1:4 tells us, "...He chose us, in love, before the foundation of the earth..." agape' love is chosen love. Love chose US! He chose US! He chose us to be the beneficiary of all that He is. we are what God is all about. we are the ones that make God continue to be who He is. He created us to love us. we were born for no other reason but to be loved with the perfect love of a holy God. when we begin to fully recognize the love that God has for us, we will love Him back. We love Him because He first loved us. our love for Him is the result of knowing His love for us. and, when we are in the midst of difficult circumstances or huge storms in our life it is easy to trust the One that we know loves us and has our best interest at heart enabling us to live fearless. no matter what!