Taking & Giving

Continuing on from my last post... The more we grow in the recognition of God's love for us the more our response will be that of investing our hearts into His truth and grace and less into things that can't satisfy.
And when we start finding meaning in the right thing, in Him, old things that may have lost their shine, start to glisten again, things begin to regain their beauty. We start to see colors again. Life is restored. Created things that weren't made to and aren't able to stabilize our hearts on their own, that we took life from until their last breath, are resurrected. We then have the eyes to see creation and experience it in the reason it was made.
You see, when we invest too much into something created, something that is not capable of giving what we humans with our God-shaped hole's are expecting, we suck the life out of it.
This is why I think in our day and age we keep needing the new. We move from one shiny toy to the next taking and taking, stealing the life from each thing until it has nothing left to give us and so we advance to the next best thing, thinking and hoping it will satisfy and fulfill.

So you and I have 2 choices: To live a life of taking & giving or just taking.

When we seek to find our purpose in Christ we find the meaning of life. He offers His love to us to take it or leave it and if we take it, if we let Him love us with His liberating love, it satisfies us and we cease to just take from creation, draining the life from it, and begin to see it and care for it in the way it was meant to be seen and cared for. So when we lose our lives in Christ, we partner with God in His plan for the restoration and redeeming of this world. Amazing!
So you and I can either keep taking and taking, and investing too much only ending up in finding a non-existent life and nothing but unfulfillment and emptiness in something the Creator created; or we can embrace Christ the way we were created to and invest the deepest parts of ourselves into the never ending, life-giving love of God with which He fills us and overflows in us. We can't contain it, it pours out of us. His love can't help but be shared because it's so amazing. People feel and see it as it explodes from within our deepest selves and we can then give and give because we are taking from a never ending well of perfectly faithful love.
"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." - John 4:13


"Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards."
- J. Campbell White


"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." - Psalm 23:1
This verse and really the rest of the chapter, is a really good example of a man who recognizes, knows, and lives in the perfect fulfilling love of God.
When we recognize God as our Shepherd, the one who feeds us, guides and leads us, grooms us, challenges us, and loves us with a perfect love, is when we learn that He is our ultimate source for life and when we learn to stop just taking and begin to take in order to give by living rooted in the endless love that the King of the universe has for us and for all creation.


Lord, hear my prayers:
"Turn my eyes from worthless things of this world, and give me life through You and your word." - Psalm 119:37
"Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives." - Psalm 90:14