“…to know the love of God which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:19
What is this love? Who is this love?
Could I possibly hold You — the fullness of You — within me?
Oh, God, Your love confounds my mind. It stills me. When I grasp even one small inkling of it, it silences my frantic insides and prepares them to hear a new chorus.
Your love is active, God. I behold — I know, in some small measure — and by that beholding, I begin to get filled. Your love doesn’t just brush up against me, it stains me. It colors me. It ripens long-dead parts of my life.
Your love is not inanimate. It is not a concept or a lifeless principal. Your love, when I stand in surveillance, burrows itself in my core. I can’t escape it. I can’t ignore it’s beauty laced with power. Your Son’s blood that fell from flesh so that flesh might know His source washes over all my misconceptions of love and invites me.
Love beckons. It reaches. It wedges itself in between false ways of thinking and seeing in order that God would take up residence anew.
Love makes space for the Father. It creates a daughter out of me. It aligns me with You.
Father, Your love works its way into my depraved mind and refreshes. It boldly declares the testimony of Your son — passing my understanding and reaching my heart. And when I receive the declaration against my stark, cold humanity, Your love is like a slow-release fume in my insides. It’s an aroma that I inhale until it becomes me.
You fill me and I adore You. You take broken flesh and bury Yourself inside of it until that flesh begins to dissipate underneath Your glory.
Your love is participatory, God. It moves off the page and writes itself across lives, long distant.
I love You, God of a love that I can barely understand. I love You, God who is ever-offering an infilling. I adore You, Father, who allures me with the promise that my heart might, one day, have the fullness in You for which I’ve longed.
You fill me. You didn’t suggest a one-time handshake, a mere position shift; You gave me Your life. You infused me with You. You promised that I might know love.
Your love is unwieldy and it’s wild. It is tender and it’s pure. It both breaks and it heals.
And it enters.
I adore You, Father, for Your love that doesn’t stand far-off but lives within. I praise You for Your love that grows and expands against my insides.
This is a love I barely know.
I praise You, God, for the lifetime pursuit You offer me. I thank You for holding nothing of Yourself back from me.
I love You for letting me know Love.
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So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog.
If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)
Then practice praise.
I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.
You can see all of the Morning Chai posts with this link: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/ and you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.
Photos compliments of Mandie Joy.
