This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. - 1 John 4:9-10
If eBay has taught us anything, it is that you can tell the value of a thing by what someone is willing to pay for it. And, therefore, you are worth far more than you could possibly imagine!
Belovedness is being dearly loved—and we are! (See Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:10; 1 John 3:1–2.)
But experiencing our belovedness often comes down to a choice. Letting, allowing, turning, engaging, reaching up to take our Father’s hand, crawling up into his lap…all of these expressions describe what we need to do again and again to receive God’s love, our part in the collaboration.
Doing so both fills and fulfills our relationship with the Father. His pursuit of us with love is met with our wanting to be caught.
Oh, how a man needs this kind of relationship if he is ever going to truly be a man!
And it is not a once-and-done proposition. The Father is continually offering it because we will continually need it. This connecting with God brings both his heart and ours into alignment, the Father the giver and us, beloved son the receiver. Repeatedly, receiving his love produces what this world and its imitations never can accomplish—a settled heart. We experience the lightness and goodness of being loved! But like a cup with a lid on it, we must uncover our heart and open up to being loved; otherwise, God can’t pour his love in and fill us with what we most desperately need… Him.
Paul wrote to the Ephesians,
Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. - Ephesians 5:1–2 MSG
The Father invites a man, his image-bearer, to partner with Him, walk with Him, trust Him, depend on Him, and align with Him for more. First on the agenda is redeeming the man’s past, which is also where the early days of training begin!
God is guiding each man toward a great comeback. The Father directs the steps. Christ has set the table and much of the work has already been accomplished, while the Holy Spirit woos us on. But we are to play our part. We have a contribution to make, a corresponding choice, an exercise of our will. What God desires to do first in a man’s life is to heal him mostly through initiating and validating him by pouring his love into him. Doing so settles the man’s heart and, in the process, invites him to partner with God in deconstructing the explosive work of the enemy and our false-self impostor.
The question is: Will you take that crucial step His way?
In your time alone with God, ask Him:
Father, what is in the way of my stepping towards you?
Jesus, where does my courage and trust lie if not you? In whom or in what?
Holy Spirit, give me the eyes to see and the ears to hear when you are loving me, healing me, initiating me, and validating me on my comeback. Show me how you’re settling my unsettled heart.
