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.” “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.” “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.” 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” Discover “how deep… His love really is” God’s love 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.

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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

You might also like:

May Your Presence Go With Us

Don Moen

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2018/01/may-your-presence-go-with-us-may-your.html

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 

The Baptism of Love

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-baptism-of-love-knowledge-about-god.html

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 

His Everlasting Arms 

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/12/his-everlasting-arms-jesus-and-his.html

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 

This Is Love

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/08/this-is-love-god-is-source-of-love-hes.html

.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

You Are One Of God’s Jewels

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2018/10/you-are-one-of-gods-jewels-it-hurts-we.html

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 

God Rejoices Over Us

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2018/05/god-rejoices-over-us-god-our-heavenly.html

 

THE HISTORY OF HYPERSPACE - For those who believed in God, there must be a fourth dimension - the fourth dimension was obviously time. Space and time are part of an integrated whole-what we call the "space-time" continuum." God is Spirit and spirit is fundamentally different from matter. Beyond our amazing physical world is yet another realm where different laws apply and where time flows at a different pace. Our knowledge and understanding of the physical world comes through the scientific method, which is based both on observations and on mathematical models that can be tested and verified by measurements and experiments. The spiritual world is something we know about by personal revelation from our God. Until the middle of the last century there was not much talk of a possible Fourth Dimension. But a sickly, brilliant mathematician-the second of six children born to a poor Lutheran pastor-Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) blew the world apart when he proved mathematically that more than three dimensions were not only possible but also highly likely. In a brilliant lecture on June 10, 1854 this shy, mentally unstable young man toppled the Euclidean world order once and for all. Riemann had discovered what we now called "field theory," which connects forces in the universe with the geometry of space. The Pythagorean Theorem from the Greeks had shown that in a two-dimensional world where a and b are the short sides of a triangle and c is the hypotenuse, then a2 + b2 = c2.

...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The

History of Hyperspace

For those who believed in God, there must be a fourth dimension  

.

.The fourth dimension was obviously time. Space and time are part of an integrated whole-what we call the "space-time" continuum." God is Spirit and spirit is fundamentally different from matter. Beyond our amazing physical world is yet another realm where different laws apply and where time flows at a different pace. Our knowledge and understanding of the physical world comes through the scientific method, which is based both on observations and on mathematical models that can be tested and verified by measurements and experiments. The spiritual world is something we know about by personal revelation from our God.

Physics and the Bible

by Lambert Dolphin

Lambert Dolphin, Physicist Website

 

Born into this world with two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and a wonderful data-crunching computer system in both halves of our brains, we humans develop a perception of space as small infants.

We do not have to be told that the world we live in has three dimensions: length, width, and height. It is almost intuitively obvious.

The Greek philosopher Euclid (330-275 B.C.) put this down in a mathematical format we now call plane geometry-which ruled the world for the next 2000 years-almost like a religion!

In grade school we all learned that the angles of a triangle must add up to 180 degrees, and that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

A line had one dimension, a square had two, and a cube, three. Beyond that it was, for centuries, thought impossible for more dimensions to exist.

Aristotle and Ptolemy added their weight to Euclid by "proving" that any more than three dimensions was "impossible."

But of course for those who believed in God, there must be a fourth dimension.

God would surely live there, thus He could watch everything that was happening in our 3-D world.

Medieval art even accommodated this orthodoxy-paintings were flattened and two dimensional so the viewer could (sort of) see the world as God sees it.

Until the middle of the last century there was not much talk of a possible Fourth Dimension.

But a sickly, brilliant mathematician-the second of six children born to a poor Lutheran pastor-Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) blew the world apart when he proved mathematically that more than three dimensions were not only possible but also highly likely.

In a brilliant lecture on June 10, 1854 this shy, mentally unstable young man toppled the Euclidean world order once and for all.

The Math of Hyperspace

Riemann had discovered what we now called "field theory," which connects forces in the universe with the geometry of space.

The Pythagorean Theorem from the Greeks had shown that in a two-dimensional world where a and b are the short sides of a triangle and c is the hypotenuse, then a² + b² = c².

For a cube which had sides a, b, and c, the diagonal, d, inside the cube, crossing from one corner to another was given by a² + b² + c² = ^d2.

Well, it did not stop there, because from purely mathematical considerations Riemann could imagine an N-dimensional cube whose diagonal, z, was simply given by a formula with N terms on the left side, a² + b² + c² + .... = z².

The math was easy, the implications were world-shaking.

As originally conceived, the "fourth dimension" was an additional spatial dimension, and not the fourth dimension now called "time."

It was Einstein who stumbled upon Riemann's pioneering work and in 1905 put 3 plus 1 together and realized that material objects not only have length, width, and height, but they also endure in time.

The fourth dimension was obviously time!

Newton's physics had imagined an absolute clock somewhere in the universe that kept the time for all bodies large and small, whether at rest or in motion.

So strongly embedded were the old views that the average person on the street has not yet grasped the radical nature of Einstein's revolution.

But now it is clear that space and time are part of an integrated whole-what we call the "space-time" continuum."

Time as well as space can be bent, shrunk or expanded-as can the other three dimensions of the world we live.

But if few ordinary people grasp what Einstein had to tell us, Riemann's revolution has had an even greater, lasting effect on physics.

However, to talk about time as the fourth dimension is to jump over 50 years of fascinating history before 1905, when the obscure little man in the Swiss patent office changed the known world all over again.

Riemann's 1854 lecture was an instant success. The world was not flat and it was not necessarily even limited to three dimensions-there might be four-or even more!

God was now crowded up into the higher levels of newly discovered "hyperspace."

Riemann had been friends with Wilhelm Weber, who was experimenting with electric sparks, magnets and flowing currents-so Faraday and then Maxwell were ready to apply Riemann's work to what became the very successful model we now call "electromagnetic theory."

James Clerk Maxwell, for instance, showed that moving electric charges constitute what we call current flow and flowing currents produce magnetic fields.

Light waves, radio waves, and x-rays all "obey" Maxwell's elegant equations: (Diagram 1)

The first equation says that electric lines of force begin and end on charges (such as electrons).

The third equation tells us that there are (apparently) no magnetic monopoles-magnetic lines are closed loops.

The second and fourth equations are vector equations actually representing three equations each, and they tell us how electric and magnetic fields are related to one another.

Maxwell's four equations are actually eight.

However if one adopts the mathematics of Riemann space, all eight equations can be written in the following form, called "tensor notation":

Fv = Av - vA

Fv = jv

The second equation says it all!

It is this ability of Riemann geometry to simplify physics that is so appealing to scientists who always prefer elegance, beauty, symmetry and simplicity when attempting to explain the physical world.

Introducing more dimensions, even though they can not be seen or directly measured, improves our ability to understand how the world works.

Georg Bernhard Riemann took ordinary "flat" geometry and crumpled it up, making spherical space which was positively curved, or saddle-shaped space with negative curvature.

All this could now be beautifully described in the new short hand of tensors.

Whole systems of simultaneous differential equations involving many dimensions could be written down and manipulated with ease.

Riemann showed that spaces could be multiply connected, as shown below.

A small bug living in the flat world of the top sheet of paper could hypothetically encounter a "Riemann slit" in the fabric of his known world and inadvertently cross over into a "parallel" universe.

A strange cast of characters seized upon Riemann's ideas soon after his famous lecture.

American psychic Henry Slade achieved notoriety in 1877 when Leipzig physics professor Johann Zollner rushed to the former's defense of magic parlor tricks and ghosts by claiming that what was impossible in our ordinary three-dimensional world was readily possible if a fourth dimension were added.

Unfortunately, the ensuing uproar led more to popular turn-of-the-century science fiction, and an impetus for ESP and psychic research which continues to this day-more than to legitimate applications in physics.

The greatest applications of Riemann's new geometry to physics had to wait half a century for Einstein and his successors.

"Flatland"

In 1884 the Christian headmaster of the City of London School, Edwin Abbott, wrote a wonderful novel about creatures who lived in an imaginary world called "Flatland."

It was now immediately easy for ordinary people like you and me to imagine what it would be like living in a two dimensional world-on a flat sheet of paper-with occasional intrusions of "beings" from a higher three-dimensional "hyperspace."

Even more fantastic science fiction now unfolded into being overnight and by the turn of the century the common man's perception of his world would never be the same.

If four dimensions are not only possible, but now certain, why not 5 or 10 or 26 dimensions?

Indeed, if we jump from Einstein to the present time, that is precisely what has happened in modern physics.

All this has taken place because introducing (mathematically) additional dimensions to the physical world "unifies" the laws, forces and fields of physics, and leads (usually) to simpler and more "elegant" ways of looking at the universe in which we live.

Discussion of hyperspace rapidly became very complex after Einstein-we must save that for another article. But let us note several things: It is indeed quite likely that the physical, material world we live in has many more than four dimensions.

Ten is a reasonable number to make our physics simple.

Discussion of hyperspace still leaves the issue of where God now lives, since he was long ago excluded from the "fourth" dimension.

Unfortunately some modern Christian apologists have implied that God is merely a higher-dimensional being, a cosmic giant who pokes his fingers into our world from time to time, alarming us with visions or miracles which we cannot fully understand.

Is God a super being from another dimension?

I don't mean to imply that miracles, visions and UFO intrusions from higher dimensions do not occur!

They most certainly occur and I believe they are all real extra-dimensional happenings.

The point is: God is not made of matter, He is Spirit and spirit is something fundamentally different from matter.

There is an all-important point to keep in mind in our discussions of modern physics and that is that "God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)

Spirit is not the same thing as matter!

We can talk endlessly about matter/energy, space and time in the created material world, but that still leaves a higher realm of God and his angels.

Who are they and where do they live?

What are the unseen worlds they inhabit?

Beyond our amazing physical world is yet another realm where different laws apply and where time flows at a different pace.

To talk first of matter and now of spirit is also to go beyond the scope of this short introductory article.

Suffice it to say, our knowledge and understanding of the physical world comes through the scientific method, which is based both on observations and on mathematical models that can be tested and verified by measurements and experiments.

The spiritual world is something we know about by personal revelation from our God.

Most marvelous of all, God has created man to live simultaneously in the material and in the spiritual world.

He wants us to be at home in two worlds-he wants us in His training program designed to prepare us for an amazing greater world which is to come.

The opening of doors for us to enter into other worlds was accomplished by the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ on the Cross-we live in a moral universe, and much more than physics is involved in the superhyperspace the Bible calls the "heavens."

"Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, 'I believed, and so I spoke,' we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

“For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.

“For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." - 2 Corinthians 4:13-18

Lambert Dolphin's Place

From time to time I write, and rewrite, short studies based on my understanding of the Bible. These thoughts are not the last word on a subject, but often just working papers that are incomplete or sketchy. You are welcome to quote from, or use, these essays--but please reference the source. Your email is most welcome. The Library is where most everything is located.

https://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/29/

You might also like:

Warp Drive

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricare.blogspot.com/2019/12/warp-drive-warp-drive-is-what-allows.html

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The Mystery of Time's Arrow

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-mystery-of-times-arrow-master-plan.html

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Gravitational Waves and the Space-Time Continuum

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/08/gravitational-waves-and-space-time.html

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Fundamental Forces Of Nature

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricare.blogspot.com/2020/09/fundamental-forces-of-nature-force-is.html

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Faster Than The Speed of Light

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2020/07/faster-than-speed-of-light-if-we-can.html

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Einstein's Theory of Relativity

CLICK HERE . . . to view . . . 

https://puricare.blogspot.com/2019/10/einsteins-theory-of-relativity.html