Tina Turner had it all wrong when she sang, “What’s love got to do with it, got to do with it. What’s love but a second hand emotion.” Love has ‘everything’ to do with it. Love is what runs our world, it is the fuel of all relationships and holds all things together.
The ‘love’ of God is farther reaching than you can possibly imagine! Think for a minute how big or how wide it ‘could be’. Think again, because you aren’t even close. The writer of Ephesians writes “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.” Clearly there is a sense that this love cannot be contained or fully explained, which makes me want to explore a deeper study into the word love.
The early church fathers understood that the essence of God was ‘love’ (agape). The word Perichoresis was used to describe the essence of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit). Perichoresis best describes the interconnection between the Trinity (three in one,) and had also been described as the ‘circle dance’ of God. (Peri – perimeter, and chorein, meaning go forward, or around. (Choreography comes from this root word as well). The center and essence of this dance is Agape, Love!
History is not the only place we see this idea of God actually being love, we find it primarily in the Scriptures. Read these next key verses very carefully and slowly, allow the Holy Spirit to show you that His love really goes farther and wider than you could possibly ever have imagined!
1 John 4:7-8 (NASB) 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
John 15:9 Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 4Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. 6It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
1 John 4:16 (NLT) 16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
1 John 4:9-10 (NLT) 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
John 3:35 “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.”
John 5:20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing;
1 John 4:19 (NLT) We love each other because he loved us first.
The fact that God ‘actually is love’ is profound. I used to think God was loving or loved, but there is a HUGE difference from being loving and begin love itself.
It gets even better, not only does God love us, he also LIKES us!! This idea was very difficult for me to believe. I knew God loved us, mostly because it was kind of like ‘his job description’, he ‘had’ to. Now that I can see that God adores us, likes us, and want so ‘fellowship’ with us, has much deeper meaning and allows me to trust Him more and more.
Love Wins! Agape Wins! This is the good news of the Gospel, let’s proclaim His love to everyone!
Mike Zenker
QUESTIONS FOR THE DAY
- Do you believe God loves you?
- Do you believe God loves everyone?
- Based on above scriptures, what is something NEW you learned or never saw before?
- Loving God is not a duty, it is a response. Can you see that truth? re-read 1 John 4:19.
VERSE FOR THE DAY
Ephesians 3:14-19 14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 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. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
VIDEO FOR THE DAY
Selah – How Deep The Father’s Love For Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKDujmtyAVk
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, show me how to respond to your love. Thank you for loving me first. Show me what this kind of love looks like towards my fellow humans.
A Grace Journey of Learning to Live Loved 
🙂
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Thanks Mike
This is so profound for me!
The Word reveals “we (all humanity) are His children, His offspring, new creations hidden with Christ in God” and the extensive list Mike listed in these blogs.
This reveals to me that the essence of my being is also now LOVE, this is also who I am. I am not God, for there is only ONE GOD, Father, Son and Spirit, however I am a son. When Jesus says “Love others as I have loved you” I now see this in His light. It is only His love, as me, that can love others. Living by this faith, that I also am love in my being opens a freedom in my mind. This is however where I also stumble and cannot grasp HIS intensive, extensive incredible embracing being of love.
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