"I'm Blessed"

What a privilage to have a day of worship! It's so good to have a chance to step back from your week, your life, to stop and remember Who it is you're living for. I've had to learn some hard lessons today about what it means to really love someone. Love involves much more sacrifice (or at least it should) than I've probably realized. Read 1 John 3-4 for some amazing truths about love. In an e-mail I wrote my mom, I wrote:

I guess I’m really learning what it means to sacrifice my desires at God’s feet! It’s hard and it hurts. But love is hard, and it often hurts. I looked at 1 John, especially ch. 3-4, talking about love. And these were some of the things I read: “This is the message we have heard from the beginning: we should love one another…we know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us. And so we also ought to give up our lives [or our personal desires!] for our Christian brothers and sisters…God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. It’s not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins…if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love [will be] brought to full expression in us…We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him.” From that, I know that 1) Love is not an option, 2) Love involves sacrifice, 3) Love, especially sacrificial love, is a direct way of being Christ-like, for that’s real love, 4) By loving, I am inviting God to directly dwell in me and to bring his own love into full expression in me, and 5) I can trust the love God has for me, and because his love (unlike mine) is faithful, selfless, and pure, I can trust him without fear (“perfect love expels all fear,” right?)

So that was my lesson today. I have to get to bed, but before I do, I wanted to share a story our pastor told today. This morning, as he was coming to church, he met a lady he knew in a motorized wheelchair who goes to a nearby Methodist church. As he passed her on the sidewalk, he asked in polite greeting, "How are you today?" And she answered with a smile and such precious words of truth: "I'm blessed!"

What a lesson to me! No matter what's going on in my life, whether or not my day has been "good" or "bad," when it comes down to it, I am truly blessed...simply because "God is love." And he loves me.