Liberating Love

"If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." - John 8:31-32
His teaching, the truth; I think in essence is His love.
The more we realize that we are loved to the full, the less we then seek to find true life in anything but the One who's the only one who can actually give it. We are set free more and more from earthly strivance and begin to see things in the light of what they really are. When we experience His love, everything else pails in comparison. When we realize that we are already loved to the full, then we stop looking for created things to love us in a way that only God can. And until we realize that only God can love us the way we need to be loved, fully and perfectly at all times, we will put way too much hope and pressure in and on the people we care so much about, thinking they can give more than humanly possible.

God created us for relationship, and relationship'S. We must have the first relationship(the one with God) in highest priority in order to be able to do any other human relationships the right and created way. God is love and so all He does is in love and because of love and that's why He created us, to be in perfect union with Him. He is the only one who can love us like He does, the way we need, the way we were created for. We were created to be loved, and His love is the greatest because He is love, so it just makes sense that we need the Love Creator's love and that we were created to experience His love in full.

Jesus knew that choosing Him was going to be a very difficult choice with all the deceit that "looks" fulfilling, and that looks like "truth", and so He prayed for us in John 17:17 "Sanctify them by the truth."
The dictionary description of sanctification says: "The act of sanctifying or making holy; the act of God's grace by which the affections of men are purified, or alienated from sin and the world, and exalted to a supreme love to God."
I think sanctification is the process of being set free over and over, more and more, from the strong pull of worldly things that trick us into thinking we can find meaning in them. Sanctification is partnering with the holy spirit in training more and more of our daily breaths to be ones of worship to the Creator.
I think it's an on-going, rest of your life thing, where God consumes more and more of our hearts to love Him and recognize His love for us.
We never become perfect here on earth, but we can and should look much more like Christ on the day we die than the day we were born.

And so life must be this ever continual growing in the depths of His love for us. Why? Because the closer we are to letting His love shape us and change us and make us more like Him, the closer we are to being fully human, the closer we are to being how we were originally created to be, fully aware of His perfect love for us knowing that He is enough and has all we need.
"But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth." - 2nd Thessalonians 2:13
So every day we must learn to fight, for our wholness's sake, to grow in understanding of truth, which is His love reminding us Who's we are and so that our hearts can be enlightened to the things that can't satisfy us like God can, leading us to choosing Him over our selfishness more and more. And because the more we choose to trust Him and let His love for us be enough, the stronger we become against temptation experiencing His grace more and more.
"Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." - Jonah 2:8
When we choose to embrace His love for us, when we recognize we are His, we release the grip of our lives and give the reigns back to Him, we begin to see that there is nothing more better than life in Him, and we accept His grace.


That and if it's true than we can't love until we've experienced love, how much more could we love others if we greatly pursued knowing more and more His love for us. Letting Him love through us is the only way to practice the love Jesus calls us to in Matthew 5:43-48, the love in which the world will recognize we are His.
Matthew 5:43-48 - "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"


We must surrender our fallible love to Him to replace it with His infallible love in order to live the love He calls us to, in order to love the people we care about consistently how they need, and in order to love the people we once couldn't love because they were our enemies. And when we let Him make us more than we are without Him by admitting our fallenness and dependence on Him, we then can live kingdomly. - I think I just made up a word.


Here is a great poem I found that I've posted before but think really embodies a true and humble grasping of what we have in Christ as we become more like Him.


Father, I will give You a gift of love
But I have no love that's mine to give
The love I know is what I see in You
Yet I will write my name on it
I will pretend that I am rich in love
I will be Your child and You will be my daddy
And we will play a game together
A game of self giving love
I will sit on Your knee and pass out love
And You will give me more
I will pretend I am giving some to You
And You will smile at me
As though it were mine to give
I will give it out to everyone who passes by
And You will be very happy
Because You will know
It really has become mine to give

Lord we surrender to Your Spirit's sanctifying and desperately long to grow in Your love. Make our hearts malleable and teach us Your truth.