New day greetings to you, precious family! This morning I have been enjoying the loving sweet presence of Jesus.
How dear He is and what a great heart of love He has for us all! He is the God of the Universe, the greatest being there is and from the distance it is from the heavenly realms to us on earth, He saw us from afar and it strikes me this morning that He was not content with that separation from us. He wanted to be just as close to us as He could possibly get to us. He wanted to be in our hearts!
That is truly an honor when someone cares enough about you to desire a heart to heart relationship with you. So precious! When Jesus shed His blood on the cross for us, His Word says “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
He has chosen us and considered us close enough to share His life and His heart with us thru our faith in Him. Not only that, but He desires to hear our hearts and cares about what is on our hearts. How special is that! Oh, my Jesus. I am so thankful this day to have such a close loving relationship with Him. What a great gift in all our lives to have someone as close as He with which we can be ourselves and know that we are loved unconditionally, totally accepted, totally forgiven and downright cherished. Doesn’t it just bless your heart to know that you have been chosen because you are loved! Oh, I’m a gal enjoying the gift of Him close to my heart today. As this song says here, indeed we have a great friend in Jesus! Enjoying His love with you all today ~ Smiling and happy and sooo glad you are here with me!!! 🙂
Eph 2:12-13; Ro 5:8; Jn 3:16,15:12-17; 1 Co 3:16; Col 1:19-23; Ac 10:38-43; Ps 13:5-6; 1 Pe 5:7; Jn 3:16
I read an article today and had a conversation with a neighbor who was distraught today that has moved my heart to share these thoughts with you all today in the love of Jesus with nobody in mind, but moved by the Spirit to share these things for however the Lord might work thru these stories.
Looking upward keeps from being downcast!!! Oh that is the delightful place to be in life for sure!!! King David got it when he wrote:
“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.”
Psalm 42:5
When you put your hope in God and have a mindset of bringing about His goals in life, it outshines the agenda of the world and the flesh!!! That’s a good thing!!! As an individual and as a family, this makes a difference because our Father’s provision is based upon His will, His plan and His purpose for us and He promises to meet all our needs for those plans. Needs are different from our wants. It is good to identify why we want. Is it for divine reasons or for the flesh or the world??? In a family, it is important to have divine “family” goals.
I know of a woman who desired to have family goals that took into consideration the whole families’ best interest and the Lord’s work, however, her husband would very rarely discuss it with her and didn’t share a plan of his own other than to just keep making money and spend as little as possible. He most often considered her ideas as insignificant and without any merit and always had reasons why they couldn’t do things that she dreamed of, like spending some extra to fix some things on their home, go and celebrate their milestone years of marriage together, inviting people over for dinner, going out on a date, doing things to help other people or putting out money to travel to see their kids. Yet he had one of the biggest men’s toy boxes that cost more than their house, always justifying purchases as investments, but not willing to invest in his relationships or God’s kingdom purposes. He wasn’t open to getting counseling to work thru their differences. Hence, it didn’t take long for the woman to realize the unfairness and selfishness of the man and his heart that cared less about her heart or the heart of others – only what he could get from her as a wife. If she didn’t provide what he wanted when he wanted, she was in trouble and he pouted and blamed her that drove her farther away. She began to lose love and respect for him and quit caring about his desires because he cared not for her heart. This isn’t to say a human heart is always focused on what is divine, but if it is, it should be listened to.
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I know of a woman who lived in her dreams of having artistic perfection in all that she did to the point that she put things and accomplishments that were worldly above her relationships and God’s kingdom purposes. It didn’t matter the family budget, she had to have the new outfit or decor for the house, the latest this or that. She spent the family into debt, causing the husband to work more and more hours to pay her overspending habit so she could stay home and raise their children. He became too tired to do the things she wanted him to do when he was home because of the hours spent trying to earn her a big enough paycheck while she stayed at home and dreamed about how to improve the looks of her house and the family appearance. Dinner was her job as a stay at home mom and it wasn’t done on time often because of her focus on her own self-interest dreaming. Finally, she went to work to have enough money to satisfy her worldly desires and with the weight of that time spent on top of all the other important things she needed to do but didn’t get done, but was trying to do – at the end of the day, she was too tired to give her husband any energy to love him – she had spent it all on things that were put before he. Her husband felt cheated and abandoned and became frustrated in not being able to reach his wife’s ways of thinking to change her mind in any way from what her heart was set on as most important in life. This story isn’t to say that women who work are always working because of a worldly mindset, as there are lots of heavenly reasons why a woman does work. Sometimes a man stays at home and works for the team effort while a woman works outside the home. The important thing is to keep good balance between the time commitments the spouses make to each other and their family and that they have divine goals together for how they spend their money so both feel good about it and cared for. This is why it is not good to be unequally yoked, but to be yoked together with Christ as the center of our lives!!! He said “I am the way, the truth and the life.” John 14:6
Oh these are some hard stories to hear, but I share these examples here with ya’s because we have an enemy named Satan and he is always tempting people. The enemy creeps into lives in subtle ways, dear ones and it all starts when the wants of hearts become different from what Jesus wants – his wants and her wants instead of God wants. He has the best plan always and when couples are open to His heart for their divine lives together, it makes a huge difference in their relationship. I know not how our Father might speak to your hearts thru this, but I rest it with Him with ya’s!!! Oh when two people are open to Godly counsel because our Father so often works thru an outside look into circumstances to reveal the answers to bring the healing, correction and victory into marriage, divine relationships happen. Our hope is always in Jesus as this song says here. Why be downcast when there are answers for victory by looking up. WOOOHOOO!!! How is Father moving your heart to think heavenly in your relationship – what do you need to give and claim for Jesus??? It is good to ponder these things and reach for the divine in relationships because it brings the divine life and oh the divine life is the best life that just makes ya smile!!! There is a reason for the light of heaven shining into our lives on earth – it is for our divine well being and one of the biggest competitors against our Father is money and what it will buy!!! Money and stress over money is one of the biggest problems in relationships. This is something important to talk about. What are the best choices for money in your life and if married, in your marriage relationship??? Get solutions to the problems before money destroys love and families.
I smile as I think back to childhood days today when we as kids would hide a given object from another or at times, the object was even another person and then we would give clues as to where the one looking could move closer to discovering the said item. For example, as the looker moved farther away from the object to be found, we would shout out “you are getting colder, colder, colder and now you are freezing cold!!!” That would be a clue the looker needed to change directions and as we gave clues such as you are getting warmer, warmer, warmer, you’re hot, you’re boiling, the looker would realize they were right in the area where they could find what it was they were supposed to find. Those of us who knew where the object was would chuckle and watch in excitement and amazement as the looker continued to get closer and closer to where to look next to find it at our shouts of clues for direction.
I share these thoughts because in life people are constantly looking for love and there are certainly ideal places (warm, hot and boiling) and not so ideal (cold, colder and freezing) places where people turn to for finding unfailing love!!! Our Father’s Word tells us “God is love.” (1 John 4:8 NIV) Also that “What a person desires is unfailing love.” (Proverbs 19:22 NIV) Hence the best place to find love personally is from God and in so first finding His love for us, loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, He then tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 12:30-31)
Our Father tells us “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13 NIV) Oh that is certainly what Jesus did for each of us in going to the cross in each of our places to bring about the forgiveness of sins of people & reconciliation between God and people. As a result of Father’s kindness to us as children of faith, we are each spared the personal reaping of the wages of sin that is death and eternal separation from God’s perfect love!!! His action of love towards us on the cross covered all of our sins in life and now He tells us as “I have loved you, so love one another.” (John 13:34) “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8)
I find it interesting – that word “fervent.” To keep fervent is to burn in Spirit, to boil, to be hot enough to boil or bubble over. To be completely intent on, to be deeply committed to something, to be earnest, to set one’s heart on with implication of accompanying desire. Our Father tells us it is He who works in us to will and act according to His purpose and that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Choosing to love others with our Father’s Spirit ablaze within us reminds me of the childhood effort of moving in the direction of getting warmer, warmer, warmer, being hot with our Father’s Spirit ablaze within us to the point we are “boiling” or bubbling over with divine love and oh that just makes me smile to think about all of us as Father’s kids being right where we are supposed to be in finding the divine love of our Father for us, divine love for Him and divine love for one another!!!
Is there somewhere in life where Father is showing you or I that we need to go in the direction of getting warmer, warmer, warmer, hot and boiling, bubbling over with divine intent on discovering divine life thru loving??? Have fun in doing so, making it a divine adventure as you and Father together look for taking steps of adding more and more warmth of heart to bring divine life love to discovery in the lives of those around you today as this song says here.
Much LOVE to you today, precious and beloved family of saints!!!!!!! Today is a day of celebration of love that began as a rememberance of Saint Valentine, a saint that was martyred for his love for Christ! God bless him for standing up for Jesus!!! He was one who understood how very much Jesus loved each one of us as if there were only one of us!!!!!!!
Each one of us is oh, sooo special to He who created us individually all unique and with a vision of greatness in every step of our creation! There is nobody like you and nobody like me in all of the world that has the same divine heavenly traits of our Father’s love and vision for us!!!!!!!
When we read the Bible, God’s love letter to each one of us, ya can’t help but know that Jesus gave His all to love us and through our faith in Him, He lives in each of our hearts because He loves us, believes in each of us and wants to do life with each one of us!!!!!!! He wants to be our everything in life, our first priority!!!
So as we go through this day of life that is given to each one of us, let us take some time to reflect upon how very much we are each one loved sooo perfectly by our Father and celebrate love today, knowing it all began with our Father and who He is and about how much He loves us and desires that we love Him and love one another as He loves us!!!!!!! Here are some Valentines for us to ponder and worship songs to listen to throughout our day today to remind us of how very much each one of us is loved forever and ever without end with unfailing, unconditional love!!!!!!! HAPPY LOVE DAY!!!!!!!
I could Sing of Your Love Forever
Your Love
Your Love Never Fails
Power of Your love
One Thing Remains
Everything I Need
Your Presence is Heaven to Me
writingsofsheila 