for love is of God. ~I John 4:7
I remember the first time the Lord pricked my heart with I John 4:7 was in 1994 when my four-year-old daughter and I were listening to a children's song cassette in the car. These little children's voices were singing "Beloved, let us love another... for GOD IS LOVE."
Reasoning with God
I was still going through a marriage crisis then and trying with all my might to love my husband. As a Christian woman, I knew I was supposed to love my husband but I just was numb from the crisis. I asked God all sorts of questions about love and what it was and what it meant and why I was supposed to love and how I was supposed to love when I was so hurt. Then this simple children's song quoting this Scripture hit me like a ton of bricks. God is love and love is of God.
When I looked up these verses, the Spirit revealed to me that I could not love anyone, including God, in my own power; it was when I began living through Him (whatever that meant) that I could love.
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God’s Love Outpoured
I was so distant from everyone at this time. One day my mother and my best friend called me and wrote me a letter, respectively, and asked me why I was shutting them out of my life. It was so weird because I wasn't purposely doing that, and both my mother and my best friend live hundreds of miles from me (my mother lives 300 miles from me in Pennsylvania and my best friend lives 2000 miles from me in Colorado). How did either of them know that I was shutting people out? They both told me, “I love you.” There it was again: love.
Thanking God
Many other things were happening during this time, but I began thanking God for His love for me (fact) until I eventually believed (faith) that He really did love me. Love was all a mind thing at the time. I had no emotion. Responding to God through Obedience
So I began "loving" my husband with my mind. I believed I loved him because God loved me, and so I loved him the best I could as God was living in love in my mind. Even though I didn't feel loving, I began obeying God with my mind and through my actions towards my husband.
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The process that the Lord takes a Christian woman through to grow her into Christ, her Head, begins with responding to the Lord through obedience... no matter how she feels. As she obeys, the Spirit will renew her mind about the facts. When she knows the facts through meditating on them, she can begin to apply them by faith as she acts upon what she knows to be true. That has been my process time and time again as God gently leads me through the sanctification process.
as we cooperate with You through obedience.
is born of God. ~1 John 4:7
as you apply—by faith— the fact that God loves you:
It will only be used to send you the Guided Meditation series.
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Other articles in this “Spiritual Growth of a Christian Woman” series:
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