True Love

"Here is love vast as the ocean loving kindness as a flood when the Prince of Life, our ransom, shed for us His precious blood. Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise? He will never be forgotten throughout Heaven's eternal days....
No love is higher, no love is wider, no love is deeper, no love is truer; no love is higher, no love is wider, no love is like your love, oh Lord... Grace and love like mighty rivers flowed incessant from above, and heaven's peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love."

I am falling further and further into the knowledge of the numerous facets of God's nature - His grace, His might, His patience, His faithfulness, His purity, His righteousness, His peace, His compassion, His generosity, His hopefulness, His beauty, and most recently, into understanding just a fraction of His deep, vast, and unfathomable love which already threatens to overwhelm me.

His love is nothing ordinary. His "love" is not just a word used to express happiness, preference, inclination or appeal but rather, an affection as deep and dense as the water of a mighty, rushing river that suffocates as we drown deeper in its depth and current.
This love is nothing like a worldly, fleeting, flirtatious love, but something entirely more deep and true.
His love means faithfulness, care, unity, affection, servitude. And just as He has placed His robe of righteousness upon our shoulders and declared us blameless, now He covers me with a garment of the virtue called 'true love' which implicates regard and compassion, love and devotion to my neighbor, my brother, and my God.

My master and teacher shows me how to put on this love in all areas of my life and what it means to be caught up in it, and to preach it, and live it. Love is no longer reserved for those I choose, but for ALL members of God's creation. And this love brings a longing in me to lay down my life for my brother, to extend my help and service, and to risk my well being for the sake of others. None of these feelings have been aroused by my own nature or character, but only by the Prince of Righteousness who is transforming me into His image. Just as God says in His Word, "No love is greater than this; that a man should lay down His life for His friends", He now directs my path so that I may encounter opportunities to follow His perfect example.

         My Savior holds me in His faithful embrace and reminds me to pour out whatever I recieve - I have been given grace, and so I give grace; I have been given life, and so I speak life; I have been forgiven, and so I forgive; I have been loved and so now I will love.

I will love with respect, encouragement, service, and sacrifice, and overflow with nothing less than the passionate and relentless love that Jesus, the lover of my soul, has shown me.
I hope to run harder after Jesus and to love the Church and unbelievers as Christ has loved them - I pray that this love will bring unity between all denominations and all peoples from every tongue and nation so that we may love and praise our God together, in perfect adoration.