Today's Thankful Heart - The Greatest Love

Today I am thankful because I am loved by my Lord.  I am his princess, His greatest love.  I am his favorite.  And guess what?  So are you, and so are each of my beloved family members.  My kids and my husband.  Knowing that you are so loved and that your entire family is so loved by such an awesome and powerful God is amazing.  Think about it.  If you are loved this much by someone who created the world and is willing to die for you, who HAS died for you, what is there to fear?  What is there to worry about?

So how do I know this?  Because the Lord tells us in His Word how much we mean to Him.  The most recent verse I've found regarding this is Zephaniah 3:17

The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. ~ Zephaniah 3:17

This is such an awesome verse and is packed full of so many gems.  First it tells me God is with me and He will save me.  He has already saved me, and He will continue to do so.  I've know this for a long time, but the next parts are what touch my heart so deep inside.  It says he takes delight in me.  No, not just delight, He takes GREAT delight in me.  It says He will quiet me with his love, I have nothing to worry about when someone this great loves me.  And then it finishes by saying He will rejoice over me with singing.  As women, I think most, if not all of us, would admit that a man writing and singing a love song to us would melt our hearts.  Now imagine the Creator of the World creating and singing a love song just for you.   Even when I mess up royally, He still loves me, still delights in me and still sings a love song of rejoicing over me. 

And I take even more comfort knowing that He loves my children and my husband with the same fiery love that He has for me.  How amazing!  No matter how much I love them and want what is best for them, it is but a shadow of what He feels for them.

I feel like I'm just gushing on this post, but then what else can you do when faced with such an amazing love.  Have you been here before?  Have you been given that revelation yet as to how very much our Creator loves and cherishes you?  If not, ask Him to show you.  He wants to, you know.  He's just waiting for you to ask and open your heart to Him.

No matter where you are in your life, no matter what you have done, He wants to show you His love.  Don't feel like you have to have things figured out and your act cleaned up to know His love.  Knowing His love is what is going to transform you.  He will clean up your messes as He cleans your heart.  He does this through His love for you.  Ask Him to show it to you, open your heart to Him no matter what you may think it looks like, because I have a secret for you.  He already knows what is deep down in that heart of yours, even better than you do and he STILL loves you more than anything in the world.  Allow His love to transform you, to comfort you, to sing over you.

Love Dare - Love is not Irritable

Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.  ~ Proverbs 16:32

This dare has really spoken to me today.  This relates to not only my marriage, but my entire family.  I want to be less irritable with my husband and my children.  I want to do less yelling and more loving of my family, showing them grace and letting God's love flow through me to them.

According to the Love Dare book, there are two contributing reasons to irritability.  The first is stress.  While I do have this in my life, it is not to the extent that I've had in the past.  So you would expect my irritability with my family would have lessened over the past year.  But this does not seem to be the case.

The second reason was selfishness.  This is usually due to lust (being ungrateful for what you have and burning with desire for things you don't have), bitterness, greed and pride.  Ouch!  I think this is where my irritability stems from, pride probably being the biggest culprit.

In Matthew 12:34 Jesus says "For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."  If this is true (and since it is God's words, it is) then what is in my heart is not good.

So, the question is how to change this.  I need my heart so filled with God's love that it overflows into all areas of my life.  The key is love.  As my heart is filled with God's love the selfishness and therefore the irritability will fade from my life.

Recently I came across a suggestion to find 40 verses in the Bible about anger.  To write them down and then read them at least 2 times a day aloud for 40 days.  By the end of that time the verses would begin to be written on your heart and at times when irritability begins to rise you will be able to use these verses.  I really like this idea and have begun a search for my 40 verses.

However, last night as I thought on this more I realized that while these verses are the Words of God and therefore, full of power, they would only help to keep down the irritability and anger in my heart.  They would in a way just be a mask or a reactive solution to the root cause.  Memorizing these verses are definitely good, but I felt there needed to be more.

I need to fill my heart with God's love so there is no room for the selfishness that breeds irritability and anger instead of just learning how to fight these emotions/reactions.  How do I do this? 

It came to me that this is why I've been studying David and his heart for God.  The way to fill my heart with God's love is to pursue His heart and His emotions.  To understand His love for me.  So I decided in addition, to these 40 verses dealing with anger, I'm going to search Scriptures for 40 verses regarding God's unfailing and passionate love for me and I will read those 2 times a day as well. 

I believe if I begin to start and end my days with verses about how much the Lord loves me even in my weakest moments, this may finally really sink into my mind and heart.  At that point I won't be able to help but return the same love to the Lord.  As His love fills my heart and life I will find more patience and peace with my family - those I love the most.

Improving your Marriage by Gazing Upon Him

I've recently started a study of David and his heart for God.  I have a desire to one day stand before my Lord and hear the words "Well done my good and faithful servant.  You are a woman after my own heart."

I posted about gazing on God's beauty on my other blog today and how the more I pursue and understanding of God's heart, emotions and love for me the greater my love for Him grows.  As this love grows my desire to follow Him and spend time with Him also grows.  I don't need to earn His love nor can I.  I don't have to work to be a "good" christian because as I realize how passionate he is about me I will naturally walk closer with Him.

Now you may ask - why post here if I already posted on my other blog tonight about this?  The reason is because focusing on God's beauty and His heart not only draws me closer to Him, it draws me closer to my dear husband.  As I gaze upon God and pursue an understanding of His heart, I am naturally filled with love for Him.  This love overflows into my other relationships as well.

I've found that as I fall more and more in love with my Lord, I'm also falling in love with my husband all over again.  Those giddy high school girl feelings that I had 17 years ago when he would walk in the room are coming back.  I'm focusing on all the things I love about him instead of those things that annoy me.  And I'm doing this without any effort because it is just coming naturally, like it did when we first started dating.  It is amazing!

So today - my advice for each of you out there who wants to improve your relationship with your husband is to pursue an understanding of God's love for you.  As you do, His love will fill you and overflow onto your husband.  As you gaze upon the Lord, He will open your eyes and heart to see yourself and your beloved in a new light.

The Drum or the Gold?

So I'm reading another Ted Dekker book - this one is called When Heaven Weeps. It is part of his The Martyr's Song series. I must say I've yet to read a book of his that is not good. The same underlying theme of God's great love for us is woven into each story, but each story line is unique. Yet he is able to weave many of the stories together. Amazing!

This particular story takes place in the early 1960's and is about one of the character's in the original Martyr's Song book (which took place during the end of WWII). He has now become a famous author due to his writing a book which was published in 1959 called The Dance of the Dead which retells what happened to him in WWII. Throughout the story there are excerpts from his book included. Here are a couple that impacted me.

(Note: Karadzic was a man in the Martyr's Song story who basically personified evil)

"We all have some of Karadzic swimming under the surface. We have all spit on the face of our Creator. Thinking that we have not is self-righteous - which is itself a form of spitting."

Wow! That may sound a bit harsh, but it is so true. I read this last week about the same time I came across the verse in Ephesians 4 again about grieving the Holy Spirit. It just seemed to go together to me.

"If you were to put all of the world's pain in one fifty-gallon drum, it would look silly next to the mountains fo gold and silver found in each moment with God. Our problem is that we rarely see past the drum."

Wow again! I've had moments where I've felt the very presence of God. It is an amazing feeling. During every one of those times I was doing one of three things - praying, worshiping and/or reading God's Word. The times of prayer and worship however, were not always times where I was on my knees before Him. Sometimes it was just going about my normal day to day activities and I would see something that would make me stop at least mentally and praise God for something that caught my attention. I've also started to get into the habit of talking to God in prayer more throughout my day, bringing every little thing to Him. He is a friend who I can confide in throughout the day.

God does want us to spend quiet time with Him, listening for that small still voice. However, He does not want us to leave that spirit of prayer and worship at the door when we walk out into the world each day. Nuturing a thankful heart and making that a normal part of your day to day activities helps to keep that spirit of prayer and worship with us all day long. When we have this attitude our perspective changes. We begin to see things through God's eyes and with His heart. Then when something bad happens to us our reaction will be different. We will start reacting to situations based on His perspective, His Word and not based on our own human understanding. We begin to focus on the moutains of gold and silver instead of on the fifty gallon drum.

So, as you begin your day - ask yourself, which do you choose - the drum or the gold?