Present

For the last few days I have been reading 1 John and true to John it is about love and having true fellowship that comes from that love. As I stand at the foot of this mountain choosing the direction to go God is speaking to my spirit about love and I have a new perspective. It has been God’s love for me that has drawn me in from the very beginning and my amazement at His sacrifice for unworthy me has always kept me in awe of Him. Today I have this keen since of awareness that I have never really understood my call to love others. All of this is kind of jumbled in my head and I am trying to work through what I am learning and how to apply it to my own life because this is what it truly means to be set apart and to be free in my relationship with Him. My struggle comes from value and self-worth and this constant fight to prove I am enough. I have spent the majority of my life trying to hide my shame of failure and bad choices that brought embarrassment to my family and made me a person undeserving of love.  This is so contradictory to my Savior who picks me up when I fall and mends my broken places; He stands and declares I am His even on my worst days without condemnation.

1 Corinthians 13

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^a but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^b 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love

I am stopped dead in my tracks by this piece of scripture I memorized years ago! True love takes vulnerability and the ability to stand exposed in front of people that may reject me. All I can think about is Jesus on trial, standing exposed to His own creation, the abuse, the punishment, and the humiliation He quietly took for the few that find the narrow gate. True love takes a huge amount of courage and the ability to be present and seen at the risk of being rejected, ridiculed, or worse but the reward is true love returned, the abundant life, a real belonging. Today is going to take some work and serious examination so for now I’m just hanging on this rock thankful that He already knew this day was coming.