Love Spilling Out

 

I saw this quote once when we were at a checkup appointment with our midwife for our third born. It really struck me. You know the whole “haters gonna hate” thing that’s been around foreverrr. But there was something about those words just as a response to hate that is just so…comfortable. It feels good. It feels good to love others. Something about the honesty of, I wanna love, is just releasing and joyful and bare and hopeful and peaceful and wonderful and…you get the picture.

I’ve literally had times in my life where I’ve tried to run from it. From loving others. And you know, when you have a God who lives inside of you who is literally love (1 John 4:8) and you’re loving on him and worshiping him and adoring him body and soul, it is basically impossible not to love others. It literally spills out of me. It’s like trying to hold a water hose at full pressure from coming out and then it just bursts and gushes out into the air. You can’t hold it in. Even when I mess things up, when I say the wrong thing to someone, or I pick that argument with my wife, or I don’t have the required patience in a certain situation, it just kinda washes away down this unending torrent of love and grace and forgiveness once we ask him for forgiveness and step back into grace. I give that to Christ on the cross, I want to own his love. (Not that we aren’t called to be responsible for our actions to others when we do sin; we are absolutely called to be responsible to try to reconcile with our brother or sister when we sin – Matt 5:24. But our true identity we are to take on is in his love as image bearers of God – Gen 1:27 – not our sin – Eph 4:23-24)
It is feeling like you are in love, that high, that ecstasy, but all the time. It’s all flowing out of God’s Spirit who lives inside us. In those moments I wonder why I ever, ever think of stepping outside of this joy, this pleasure. To think that we get to spend eternity with God and with each other in a world of his love, literally spilling out and flowing out across the world…wow. Lovers gonna love…that’s what lovers of God do. They can’t help it, because God is love and God is in them, in us. We just gotta love! It’s who we are 🙂

Be loved today. Know it, feel it. Not from yourself, not just from someone or something else, feel it and know it in deep intimacy with Jesus. You’re gonna love it! You’re gonna smile, you’re gonna feel this warm joy coursing through your heart and body and mind and it’s all going to be Jesus’ love for you and those in your world just permeating you, it’s literally intoxicating. You’re oh so treasured 🙂 So go for it, jump into his world of love!

Your brother in Christ,

Joel