God's Eternal Love

I've written a few blogs since I last wrote with something "meaty." I've had a problem all week just getting shifted into gear. It's spring and there are so many things that need to be done which doesn't leave me with much time to get creative. This morning I cleaned up the doggie messes in the yard and then Michael hit it with the weedwacker (obviously our yard is simply a yard of weeds) and then I raked everything into a couple small piles to be carted to the burn pile in the vacant lot. I had a lot of computer things to finish up this morning in between doing things for M down in the yard.

I have a friend who just recently lost her husband of 20 years and she had forwarded me something that she had written before Eric died. Her faith leans toward reformed and I was at a loss as to what she really meant by that so she forwarded me a blogspot she had written back in October. It was very clear and concise and to the point. She has a way of taking an abstract idea and turning it into clear, information-packed sentences. I enjoyed her blogspot. Please pray for Heather today. Eric has only been gone a couple months and she is still grieving for him. She has a busy weekend ahead doing things that she'd always done with Eric and she must now do alone. She will need lots of prayer.

The Gjerstads are still at the front in Liberia West Africa. I honestly don't know how they do it. They are a family of 12 that sold everything they had and moved to Liberia to take the gospel of Jesus to that part of the world. They must be dying for pizza about now, LOL! But it is in the little things that people seem to need the most prayer. Have you ever noticed that before? If you would keep Dan and Stacy and their 10 children in your prayers I would appreciate it.

The last I wrote, I wrote of God's Eternal Love. How it is eternal in length but it's also eternal in character and quality. When I say "God's eternal love," I'm not just talking about the fact that He will love me forever. Although that is also what He means. God's love is eternal in lifespan but it is eternal in quality and perfection. God loves me with His perfect eternal love. And this love, by its very nature, suggests the motive, the measure, and the means of my surrender by which I yield myself unreservedly to abide in Him.

This love suggests it's own motive. With one look I can see how this love stands and pleads and prays for me. The divine form of this love, its eternal glory, its heavenly beauty, its tender pleadings, and its very thought saying "Come, abide in Me." It points me to the cross where His outstretched arms seem to say, "I love you this much," and it has proven itself beyond question that the reality of this eternal love is available for me. How can I ... so undeserving, so totally unworthy ... possibly grasp what I have been given? It is simply beyond me and yet I know it is so because He says it is so. In my own emptiness I come to Him to be filled with this infinite love that is so totally other than any love I can ever know.

The Bible assures me that Christ taught His disciples that to abide in Him was to abide in His love. The two cannot be separated. When I receive Christ I receive His love. It is the Love of the Father passed down to me. The blessed union of Christ with the Father and His life in Him is the only rule of my thoughts and expectations in regard to my living and abiding in Him. I must contemplate the origin of Christ's love. They are one ... the Father and the Son ... in one life and one love. In this His abiding had its roots. Though dwelling here on earth, He knew that He was one with the Father; that the Father's life was in Him, and that His love was on Him. It is this unity that comes to claim me. By His birth He became man, and took my nature that He might be one with me. By my new birth I become one with Him, and am made a partaker of the divine nature. The chain that binds me to Him is as real and close as that which binds Him to the Father. My claim on Him is as sure and always availing as was his on the Father. My union with Him is every bit as close.

And it is a union of divine life, it is one of an infinite love. In His life of humiliation on earth He tasted the blessedness and strength of knowing Himself the object of an infinite love, and of dwelling in it always. From His own example He invites me to learn that herein lies the secret of rest and joy. I am one with Him; I must yield myself now to be loved by Him, I must let my eyes and heart open to the love that shines and presses in on me from every side. I must abide in His love for me.

Christ's was a life of subjection and dependence, and yet at the same time, most blessed. To my proud, self-seeking nature the thought of dependence and subjection suggests the idea of humiliation and servitude; in the life of love which the Son of God lived, and to which He invites me, they are the secret of blessedness. The Son is not afraid of losing anything by giving up all to the Father, for He knows that the Father loves Him and can have no interest apart from the beloved Son. He knows that as complete as is the dependence on His part is the communication on the part of the Father of all He possesses.

As a believer I study this life of Christ as the pattern and promise of what mine may be, learning to understand how the "Without me you can do nothing" is but the forerunner of "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." I learn to glory in infirmities, to take pleasure in necessities and distresses for Christ's sake; for "when I am weak, then I am strong." I rise above the ordinary tone in which so many Christians speak of their weakness, while they are content to abide there, because I have learned from Christ that in the life of divine love the emptying of self and the sacrifice of my will is the surest way to have all I can wish or will. Dependence, subjection, and self-sacrifice, are for me as they were for Christ. As Christ lived in and through the Father, even so I live through and in Christ.

I must abide in the love of Christ. Taking and studying His relation to the Father as a pledge and a promise of my own relationship with Him can become. Just as blessed, as mighty, as glorious as was His life in the Father, can mine be in him. In the light of Christ's life in the Father, let it likewise from this point on be to me a blessed rest in my union with Him. Let it be a fountain overflowing with strength and joy. What is required of me in this circumstance? That I take time to study the divine image of this life of love set before me in the union of love between the Father and the Son. Soul, be still and listen; let every thought be hushed until it has entered into my heart: Abide in my love, even as I abide in the Father's love. Christ was the revelation of the Father on earth. Believers are the revelation of Christ on earth. In Him I abide continually for it is a continuing thing. Every moment is a continuation of Christ on earth. Each separate moment comes continuously in His love. It is an ever fresh, ever new revealing of the Father through the Son. It is abiding in His love. Amen.