deep |diːp| adjective 1 extending far down from the top or surface: She dove deep, down into His love.
This week I have the honor of speaking on the Girl Talk panel at this year’s Megafest! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this. I have been attending Megafest for many years now. It has been a must-go-to conference for Field and I. The experience alone has changed my life! You definitely should join me. Click here for more info.
While praying over the week, the Lord put this message on my heart for today. It’s all about diving deeper into what He has in store for us. We can never get too comfortable in the shallow.. God is calling us to dive into the deep.
A friend of mine has been calling herself a “newborn” Christian for many years now. She has been serving the Lord and going to church regularly, and I began to wonder why she would consider herself a new believer when she has been in the family of God for so long.
Through our conversation, I began to realize that though she understood the Gospel and God’s forgiveness of her sins through the sacrifice of Jesus, she had not yet fully accepted or understood the greatness of His love for HER, specifically.
She had been trying to make herself “good enough” for God’s love by obeying all of His commands and regulations found in Scripture, but she would always come up short. Therefore, believing that she was not a “mature” believer, but a newborn–just learning, and hoping to be better someday.
But the truth is, we ALL come up short–whether we have been Christians for decades, or for only a few months. Even Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, talks about struggling with sin in Romans Chapter 8:14-25, “So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.”
In order to really understand Christianity, we have to first understand God’s character–and God’s character is love. God’s love for humanity is shown throughout scripture from the patience He had with the Israelites in the desert to the mercy he showed to prostitutes and tax collectors in the New Testament, to the greatest act of love the world has ever known–through the sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus.
God is love, and the Bible defines love in this way in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
If you don’t understand God’s love for you, then you will never fully understand God’s character and it will be really hard for you to comprehend the kind of purpose and destiny He has for your life. If you don’t understand the depth of His love for you, then you will never be able to live in the fullness of freedom, grace, and mercy.
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.” Ephesians 3:18-19
My favorite part about that scripture is the part where it says we should understand His love, though it is too great to understand completely. His love for us is incomprehensible!
We are alive because God wants to have relationship with us. The whole reason for our existence is to be loved by God and to love God.
“We love one another because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
Love is always a response to love. We love, because He first loved us. The only reason we can experience love of any kind in this life is because of God. When I think about that, I’m blown away. My deepest love for my husband, Field, is just a small part of who God is. Not only do I love God, but I can love myself and others because God first loved me.
When we love God and put Him first in our lives, we no longer obey His commands because we feel obligated to. We obey Him because we want to please Him!
I want to do things for Field because I love him. I want to make him happy and I truly enjoy getting him things, taking him places, or just doing things for him just to see him smile. He does the same for me. I know he loves me because his words and actions consistently line up. This is just like our love with God, but oh–so much deeper!
The very purpose of your life, and the reason you were created, was to be loved by God. That is where your purpose and destiny begins! When we fall deeper in love with God and start to understand His character, it is then that we start to understand our purpose in life. When we really begin to grasp this concept, our entire outlook on Christianity will change. You are no longer a “newborn” believer. From the moment you accept God’s loving sacrifice for you through Christ as your Savior, you are fully forgiven and free!
Now, go and LIVE in this Love! See you at Megafest!
XO-
Sabrina
