Abounding in Love

We cannot begin to imagine how much God loves us. I suppose the closest that we can come as humans is the way that we love our children. The Bible says that God is abounding in love. This is something I like to meditate and soak in, it helps to know Gods position and attitude towards us when we go to pray for someone, or a placing ourselves in need of His provisions. We find that He demonstrates the truth of the following scripture over and over again.

Psalm 103:8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

The problem that we encounter most is that we people do not love ourselves. Through some historical programming or interpreting of life we do not love or accept ourselves. Now if we have decided that we are not good enough, loveable, or acceptable then we automatically transfer this conclusion onto God. Just because it is our truth, it does not mean that it is the truth, or more particularly God’s truth. We can end up with a small, harsh, unloving god of our own making who looks just like our beliefs! Usually we need ministry to help identify how this summation of ourselves has been established before we can be truly free to receive all the blessings that our Father in heaven has for us. It can be a major block to receiving our healing and living in joy and peace.

Our picture of God is vital to our expectations when we seek to receive ministry. At the root of the words translated ‘believe’ and ‘faith’ is the meaning trust. We think of faith as some kind of weird spiritual wand that we can use to get what we want. The reality is that true faith is based on trust. Trusting that God is good, really does love us, can do what He said He would do, and that He really genuinely desperately wants to help us. In fact He so much wants to help us that He sacrificed His Son so that He could do it. We don’t have to talk Him into it, it was His idea and He has provided so that it can happen. We simply have to trust Him, believe that He is good and receive from Him. If we trust Him and His love we do not even need to know how He is going to do it, simply that if we believe then He will find a way.

In 1 Corinthians 13:13 we read of the great keys of faith, hope and love. And we read that love is the greatest of all. Faith and hope are activities and choices based on trusting God. But love is greatest because it is found in the person of God, because God is love. Faith and hope then are lesser because they proceed from our belief in the nature of a loving God.

13 There are three things that will endure–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love. NLT