Thankful Thursday
November 12th, 2009 by Ashley
About a year ago I sat in church on a Wednesday. Trying to stay awake after a long day… little did I know how my world would change that night. The pastor was talking about our perceptions of things, and how much they affect our lives. How if our perception was changed it could change everything.
He gave a list of “what if…was different than you think?” scenarios.
I can still hear the one that caught my attention loud and clear…
“What if God loves you more than you can possibly imagine?”
The tears came instantly, as I contempletated that question. What if He does? What if, subconciously, I’ve always lived with this picture of God as someone to be feared. He’ll save me from my sins because He loves me, but I’ll have to pay in the meantime.
I never in my life would’ve articulated this as how I viewed God, but in that moment, I knew I’d been carrying that burdened view of Him for a long time.
But what if He does love me more than I can possibly imagine?
That changes everything.
And it has. Over the last year God has been teaching me so much about His love for me. Showing me all the ways I had put His love in a box and tied it to a million conditions. Teaching me that’s not what He wants to give me. He wants to give me so much more than that.
Slowly, I’m learning to recieve it.
There are times when I don’t feel God’s love. It seems remote, surreal, distant.
But if I set my feelings aside and look, it’s absolutely there. How I feel, and the circumstances that surround me skew my view of Him, but if I push all of that out of the way and just look straight at Him, I know His love is real.
And sometimes His love feels more real to me than anything I can see. And nothing can touch me or shake me because I am loved by Him. Those are the moments I live for.
But in the moments when I’m not feeling it, I make myself stop and look. I see and know, YES, He loves me. And His love is the greatest thing.
These words have been running through my mind all week. When I embrace them and really soak up the absolute truth of them, everything else just fades away. And it’s wonderful!
Posted in Thankful
