God's Love.

"...I will love God because He first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will. The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not like her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love." -Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

Accepting the love of God. Actually believing, and not just knowing, that He can never love me any less or any more than He does right this minute. Believing that know no matter what I have done or what I will do in the future, the Creator of universe will never change His mind about me, completely flawed and imperfect. I believe this is one of the hardest things to accept when coming into a life with Jesus Christ. How can one even begin to fathom the immensity of His unconditional love let alone accept it?

I am deeply convicted of this. It is something that I have struggled with for a really long time. How can the Creator of all eternity be so in love with me? I am a sinner. I make mistakes. I put worldly things, and myself, before Him. But then I realize that I am human. God knows the world of which we live. A broken, fallen world. He wants to save us, He wants to heal us, He wants to protect us. All because of His love. We don't have to do anything in order for Him to do these things.

I love God. That's pretty obvious. But I never realized that I could not really love Him without accepting His love in return. Of course, this was always said to me but I never truly understood it.

God is pursuing me every single day. I think back to when I didn't know who He was (at least not the way I know Him now) and I see how He was calling me to Him. When I was bitter and angry, He was still chasing me with His arms wide open ready to catch me. He constantly shows me His love. There came a point where I just stopped fighting it. I guess you could say I caved. I accepted that God will never stop loving me and never stop pursuing me. Now, I embrace it. I crave it. When one accepts the love of God, the hole is filled, the thirst is quenched, and the hunger is fulfilled.

Thank you, Father!