the vastness of my Father's love for me

One thing that I have been remiss in doing is sharing with you what has been happening in my heart in the past seven months. And tonight, as I listen to my grandparents snore across the room, I think it’s about time to talk about it.

One of the most significant things that I have learned during my time here in London is about the love of God. During my Discipleship Training School, we had a teaching on the Father Heart of God, and the speaker said that it is something that we all know in our heads, but that most people don’t know in their hearts. And while I knew that statement was true about me, I didn’t know how to change it.

So I started to pray.

Ephesians 3:17b-19 says, “…and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

The love of God surpasses knowledge. It is greater than my head can handle – so great that only my heart can seek to speak its language. To know the love of God is how I can be filled with the fullness of God. Of course the Enemy doesn’t want me to understand it. Of course my flesh rebels at the first taste of it.

Of course my Spirit longs for it.

The love of God can make me cry like nothing else can – I have learned that over numerous worship sessions with YWAM, when the love of God blankets me so heavily that I fall to my knees and sob. I have felt it in the middle of the night, when I wake up from nightmares and know that my Father is the one calming my racing heart and watching the very thoughts that form in my sleep. I have seen it when my mind doubts and God uses unexpected expressions of affection from my housemates on the days that I am the lowest.

C.S. Lewis said, “God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he might love and perfect them.”

God does not need us to carry out His plan, yet He loves us so much that He created us and gave us the opportunity to be loved by Him. He gives us the opportunity to be loved by Him daily, all day, if we’ll take the time to sit in His presence and let Him love us. If we’ll take the time to notice the notes of love that He drops into our lives.

My housemates who don’t touch people hug me. That’s the tangible love of God my Father for me. My friends send me surprises from around the world, even when I don’t have time to talk to them. My Father even spoils me! I can ride a bicycle around London and shout praises to God as I wheel around His creation, I can play a ukulele badly and improvise songs of adoration, I can sit in the quiet stillness of the morning and breathe deeply as I feel my Father’s calming and complete adoration of me. That’s the love of my Father – the fact that I can know even a corner of His creative heart and love for me.

God’s love does not wax or wane with my works.

God’s love does not disappear when I don’t take the time to treasure it.

God’s love does delight my soul and make my heart ache so much that I could cry from the happiness of starting to know what it is to be absolutely loved.