Dearly Loved Children

Psalm 119:18, 20
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.

Ephesians 5:1-2
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 3:17b-19
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Yesterday, we began the journey to discover what it means to have life abundantly, and how we can begin to live our lives in that abundance.

Christ went through all that He did because of His great love for each of us, and I believe the first step toward abundant life is knowing His great love for us – I mean really knowing it, not just intellectually, but deep down in our bones, so that it affects every aspect of our lives. We need to accept His thick, lavish love so that we can each live a life that manifests this love in every way.

The first, and most amazing way we can come to discover His great love for us is His Word. We have at our finger-tips the most amazing, most powerful love letter ever written. The Bible is God’s love letter to us and it is alive, it comes to us from a living, breathing God, and He wants to use His Word to get under our skin and change us from the inside. We need to be praying each and every day that our "souls would be consumed with longing for His laws at all times." His Word is rich and there is so much that we can find – so many little treasures just waiting for us to dig them up and consume them.

Ephesians 5:1 holds one of my favorite discoveries of all-time, but you have to dig a little to get there. The key is in the Greek word for "dearly," agapetos, meaning "beloved, esteemed, dear, worthy of love, favorite." That’s right, favorite. I had always struggled with wanting to be the favorite, the one everyone liked. So, you can imagine the joy and elation that came with this discovery of mine. Each of us is God’s favorite! I am continually amazed that His love is so deep, and wide, and unfathomable that each and every one of us can be His favorite, for that is how He sees us, and that is how He treats us.

In spending some time really just meditating on just exactly what that means, God has begun to show me what it means for each of us to be His favorite. And in the process I have begun to cherish this truth even more. We are each His favorite, set apart from the others, unique, and greatly loved. But standing in the midst of a hundred or more other people who are also His favorite has a way of diminishing the glory behind the truth, doesn’t it? But, in fact it is there, standing in the midst of many more saints that we should be able to get a glimpse of the true glory and wonder of His mighty and vast love.

It is because we all are His favorites that we can be set free from comparing ourselves to one another, and comparing our relationship with God to another person’s. God created us each completely unique, and it is within our individuality that God approaches us, loves us, teaches us and uses us. My relationship won’t look like yours – it can’t, because that is how God wants it. He created us each unique, and rather than dealing with us all in the same, exact, cookie-cutter way, He comes to each of us individually, and loves us as we are, where we are.

That’s the beauty of His love. And because we all experience His love in a slightly different way, perhaps together we will "have power . . . to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you (and I) may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Now wouldn’t that be glorious indeed?

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)