Happy Valentine’s Day!!
First of all, I encourage you to treat yourself to some flowers and chocolate if you are not expecting any deliveries today. I did!
Enjoy this box of Chocolates!
In the past few weeks I have been feeling a nudge. No, it is more of a wooing, a drawing, an encouragement to set my focus on the Love of God. Not a striving focus, but sinking into a relaxing, yummy bath topped with rose petals kind of submission. Relinquishing my barriers and control to His extravagant love for me, and enlarging my heart to love Him more than I ever have before.
I felt that God was inviting with His still, small voice, “Take a break from looking for Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome, and let Me fill you with more of My Love for you. As your eyes gaze into Mine, you will be saturated with My perfect Love, and surrounded by My Favor. Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome will find you!”
On Sunday, I believe God spoke again through my new friend Lynette when she said, “God is grounding you [before releasing the blessings.]” It was a phrase that has not departed from my mind, and I immediately thought of Ephesians 3:17, that we are to be “rooted and grounded in love.” God’s Love!
Yesterday was the beginning of Lent, and I’ve been thinking about the blog my niece Elizabeth began 6 years ago (Long To Love - please take a look at her very first post!) It is my aim, for the next 6 weeks in preparation for Easter, to indulge myself in the multifaceted Love of God, to be rooted and grounded in His Love, and “to pray to love the Lord your God more than you pray to breathe your next breath.” (The advice Beth Moore gave to Elizabeth! Read the story is in her blog post above.)
This Valentine’s Day, and for the next few weeks, I invite you to pray and declare Ephesians 3 with me, as I pray for you, and for the many people longing for romantic love in a Kingdom Marriage:
“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.
I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.
And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love (rooted and grounded in LOVE!), you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.
Reach out and experience the breadth!
Test its length!
Plumb the depths!
Rise to the heights!
Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.” Ephesians 3:14-20, The Message
AMEN!
Expecting to be amazed ~
Barbara
© Barbara Nelson – 2013
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