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Begin Again: Settle Down Deep in His Love
“God is love.” - the supreme surprise of God’s love — it has nothing to do with
you
.
Others love you because
of you, some people love you because of you. Not God - He loves you because He
is He. He loves you because He decides to. Self-generated, uncaused, and
spontaneous, His constant-level love depends on His choice to give it. You
don’t influence God’s love. You can’t impact the treeness of a tree, the
skyness of the sky, or the rockness of a rock. Nor can you affect the love of
God. “God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we
were still sinners.”
Max Lucado
“May you
experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.” — Ephesians 3:19
NLT
Pipín Ferreras wants to go
deep, deeper than any person has ever gone.
You and I are content with 10
or 20 feet of water.
Certain risktakers descend
40, maybe 50. Not Pipín.
This legendary Cuban diver
has descended into 531 feet of ocean water, armed with nothing but flippers, a
wet suit, deep resolve, and one breath of air.
His round trip lasted three
minutes and twelve seconds.
To prepare for such a dive,
he loads his lungs with 8.2 liters of air — nearly twice the capacity of a
normal human being — inhaling and exhaling for several minutes, his windpipe
sounding like a bicycle pump.
He then wraps his knees
around the crossbar of an aluminum sled that lowers him to the sea bottom.
No free diver has gone
farther. Still, he wants more.
Though he’s acquainted with
water pressure that tested World War II submarines, it’s not enough.
The mystery of the deep calls
him. He wants to go deeper.
Could I interest you in a
similar ear-popping descent? Not into the waters of the ocean, but into the
limitless love of God.
“May your
roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able
to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how
deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for
yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or
fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God
Himself.” — Ephesians 3:17-19 TLB
When Paul wants to describe the love of God, he can’t
avoid the word deep. Dig “deep into the
soil of God’s marvelous love” (Ephesians
3:17).
Discover “how deep… His love really is” (Ephesians
3:18).
Envision Ferreras deep
beneath the ocean surface.
Having plunged the equivalent
of five stories, where can he turn and not see water?
To the right, to the left,
beneath him, above him — the common consistency of his world is water.
Water defines his dives,
dictates his direction, liberates him, limits him. His world is water.
Can a person go equally deep
into God’s love? Sink so deep that he or she sees nothing but?
David Brainerd, the
eighteenth-century missionary to American Indians, would say so. He journaled:
I withdrew to
my usual place of retirement, in great tranquility. I knew only to breathe out
my desire for a perfect conformity to Him in all things. God was so precious
that the world with all its enjoyments seemed infinitely vile. I had no more
desire for the favor of men than for pebbles. At noon I had the most ardent
longings after God which I ever felt in my life.
In my secret
retirement, I could do nothing but tell my dear Lord in a sweet calmness that
He knew I desired nothing but Him, nothing but holiness, that He had given me
these desires and He only could give the thing desired.
I never
seemed to be so unhinged from myself, and to be so wholly devoted to God.
My heart was
swallowed up in God most of the day.
You will need a descent into
such love on your new-beginning journey. Scripture offers an anchor. Grab hold
of this verse and let it lower you down:
“God is love.”
— 1 John 4:16 NLT
One word into the passage
reveals the supreme surprise of God’s love — it has nothing to do with you.
Others love you because of
you, because your dimples dip when you smile or your rhetoric charms when you
flirt.
Some people love you because
of you. Not God. He loves you because He is He.
He loves you because He
decides to. Self-generated, uncaused, and spontaneous, His constant-level love
depends on His choice to give it.
“The Lord did
not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than
other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the
Lord loved you.” — Deuteronomy 7:7-8
You don’t influence God’s
love. You can’t impact the treeness of a tree, the skyness of the sky, or the
rockness of a rock.
Nor can you affect the love of God. If you could, John
would have used more ink: “God is
occasional love” or “sporadic love”
or “fair-weather love.”
If your actions altered His
devotion, then God would not be love; indeed, He would be human, for this is
human love.
And you’ve had enough of
human love. Haven’t you?
Enough guys wooing you with
Elvis-impersonator sincerity.
Enough tabloids telling you
that true love is just a diet away.
Enough helium-filled
expectations of bosses and parents and pastors.
Enough mornings smelling like
the mistakes you made while searching for love the night before.
Don’t you need a fountain of
love that won’t run dry?
You’ll find one on a
stone-cropped hill outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus hangs, cross nailed
and thorn crowned.
When you feel unloved, ascend
this mount. Meditate long and hard on heaven’s love for you.
Both eyes beaten shut,
shoulders as raw as ground beef, lips bloody and split. Fists of hair yanked
from his beard.
Gasps of air escaping his
lungs. As you peer into the crimsoned face of heaven’s only Son, remember this:
“God showed
His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still
sinners.” — Romans 5:8 NLT
Don’t trust other yardsticks.
We often do.
The sight of the healthy or
successful prompts us to conclude, God must really love him. He’s so blessed
with health, money, good looks, and skill.
Or we gravitate to the other
extreme. Lonely and frail in the hospital bed, we deduce, God does not love me.
How could He? Look at me.
Rebuff such thoughts!
Success signals God’s love no
more than struggles indicate the lack of it.
The definitive,
God-sanctioned gauge is not a good day or a bad break but the dying hours of
His Son. Consider them often.
Let the gap between trips to
the cross diminish daily.
Discover what Brainerd meant when he said, “My heart was swallowed up in God most of
the day.”
Accept this invitation of
Jesus:
“Abide in My love.” — John 15:9 NASB
When you abide somewhere, you
live there. You grow familiar with the surroundings.
You don’t pull in the driveway and ask, “Where is the garage?”
You don’t consult the
blueprint to find the kitchen. To abide is to be at home.
To abide in Christ’s love is
to make His love your home. Not a roadside park or hotel room you occasionally
visit, but your preferred dwelling.
You rest in Him. Eat in Him.
When thunder claps, you step beneath His roof.
His walls secure you from the
winds. His fireplace warms you from the winters of life.
As John urged,
“We take up
permanent residence in a life of love.”
— 1 John 4:17 The Message
You abandon the old house of
false love and move into His home of real love.
Adapting to this new home
takes time. First few nights in a new home you can wake up and walk into a
wall. I did.
Not in a new home, but in a
motel. Climbed out of bed to get a glass of water, turned left, and flattened
my nose. The dimensions to the room were different.
The dimensions of God’s love
are different too. You’ve lived a life in a house of imperfect love.
You think God is going to cut
you as the coach did, or abandon you as your father did, or judge you as false
religion did, or curse you as your friend did.
He won’t, but it takes time
to be convinced.
For that reason abide in Him.
Hang on to Christ the same way a branch clutches the vine.
According to Jesus the branch
models His definition of abiding.
“As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can
you unless you abide in Me.” — John 15:4 NASB
My friend Keith took his
wife, Sarah, to Cozumel, Mexico, to celebrate their anniversary. Sarah loves to
snorkel.
Give her fins, a mask, and a
breathing tube, and watch her go deep. Down she swims, searching for the
mysteries below.
Keith’s idea of snorkeling
includes fins, a mask, and a breathing tube, but it also includes a bellyboard.
The surface satisfies him.
Sarah, however, convinced him
to take the plunge.
Forty feet offshore, she
shouted for him to paddle out. He did.
The two plunged into the
water where she showed him a twenty-foot-tall submerged cross.
“If I’d had
another breath,” he confessed, “the sight would have taken it away.”
Jesus beckons you to descend
and see the same. Forget surface glances.
No more sunburned back. Go
deep. Take a breath and descend so deeply into His love that you see nothing
else.
Join the psalmist in saying:
“Whom have I
in Heaven but You?
And earth has nothing I desire besides You.
My flesh and
my heart may fail,
but God is
the strength of my heart and my portion forever…
My heart has
heard You say, ‘Come and talk with Me, O My people.’ And my heart responds ‘Lord,
I am coming.’” — Psalm 73:25-26 NIV; Psalm 27:8 TLB
Excerpted
with permission from Begin Again by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
Your Turn
Is there a better resolution
for 2021 than to love Jesus more and to sink in His love?
I don’t think so! Let’s dive in! Come share your thoughts with us. We want to hear from you! ~ Laurie McClure, Faith.Full
Max Lucado
Since
entering the ministry in 1978, Max Lucado has served churches in Miami,
Florida; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and San Antonio, Texas. He currently serves as
Senior Minister of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. He is America’s bestselling
inspirational author with more than 130 million books in print. Follow his
website at MaxLucado.com Facebook.com/MaxLucado Instagram.com/MaxLucado
Twitter.com/MaxLucado
https://www.faithgateway.com/begin-again-settle-down-deep-in-his-love/#.X-3feNIzbZ4
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