PASSION: zeal; fervor; ardor; vehement desire
A main goal of this blog, and my hope, is to offer glimpses into God’s heart of love for you. Yes, for you. It is one thing to have the knowledge that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so we could have everlasting life. It is quite another reality altogether to experience that love. I mean really experience it.
My hope is that through these glimpses of God’s heart of love, his love for you will become more and more evident. Even tangible.
I spent the first 20+ years of my Christian life not fully experiencing the love of God. I had the knowledge. I just didn’t realize the reality of that love. That reality hadn’t made the journey from my head to my heart. But all along that love was there. Right under my nose. He was always there.
Negative life experiences can skew our perception of what God is like. If you have a hard time believing God loves you, I want to encourage you to open your heart up to the possibility that it’s true. He really does love you. Sometimes it hurts to hope. Hope anyway. Hope against hope.
He loves you more than you could know, thinks about you constantly and his plans are for your good. You were the joy that was before him that gave him the strength to endure the shame, reproach, rejection, and unimaginable pain of his crucifixion and everything leading up to it. He saw you on your worst day and wanted you. He chose to suffer all this for you because he knew you were worth it.
Only passion could do that. He loves you passionately. Fervently. Vehemently. This is intense love. It is not like human love. This is the love of God.
May this love be the soil into which you sink your roots and on which your life is built. May you come to know and experience the full width, length, height and depth of God’s love for you. Ephesians 3:17-18 (paraphrasing mine)