NOTE: This was written as a message given to a Special Needs Parent group on love. The Holy Spirit met us there and modified it to meet the needs in the group that day. We have a special needs daughter as well. Be blessed as you read. God loves you so much!
I don’t know if I know how to truly love yet but I do know the One Who is Love.
God speaks so often through our children. Especially our “special” ones.
Anne, without knowing I was coming here, leaned over in the car line the other day and asked –
“Mom, is love a powerful word?”
“Love is a powerful word, sweetie.”
So often in the school setting we hear, “Hate is a powerful word.” Which it is. But it caught me off guard as the Holy Spirit highlighted the power of the word LOVE.
To say I LOVE you.
Love is the one thing that belongs to a person and only that person can give it away. Someone might pretend to love to please another, or SAY they love, and even do all the right “things” but not actually be loyal in their heart towards that person. We see this a lot in even the church toward God. We get confused into thinking that our love for God is only what we are doing for him, but our hearts are far from him.
Love is something that can only be given away by the person. It cannot be taken away. It cannot be forced. It can only be given.
LOVE IS a powerful word.
I remember when I was 13 and was dating a boy. I was on a convenient store telephone right down the street from my house talking with him. When we got off he said, “I love you.” I said I love you back. But something did not sit right with me. I knew it was wrong that I told him I loved him. I did not love him. Even at that age I knew better. And from that moment on, I vowed not to say that to any boy until I was going to marry them.
So as a physical reminder, I set aside a small frame I had. It had two individual hearts for pictures and I vowed to God that the only people that would go in there would be myself & the one I really loved.
It’s since been spray painted red, but a picture did land in there one day. And this year will be 26 years…of love.
Why is the word LOVE so powerful? It’s because it’s not just a word. If you express yourself as “I love you” to someone, it means more than just words. Actions are an overflow of where your affections truly lie. To say you love someone carries the weight of action. It carries the weight of loyalty. It carries the weight of God’s heart.
Just look at the cross. The cross screams love.
God has spoken his LOVE AFFIRMATION over us through the Word and through action. So much so that it reminds me of that scene in the movie Elf where he’s yelling ‘I’m in love! I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it!”
That’s what God has spoken over our lives. ”I’m in love! I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it!”
Over you!! Over me!!! He’s not ashamed of you!
In the word we find his love affirmation over us too.
One morning I woke up and my spirit must have been communing with the Lord during the night because I was saying back to him his Word – “Yes, you have loved me with an everlasting love….”
Jeremiah 31:3 says, “The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: “‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.'”
God wants our affection. He wants us to reminisce about his love. Over and over again. He wants us to look at his acts of love over and over. Why? So we don’t forget? Yes, so we’ll stay in love. So the fire of the Holy Spirit will continue to burn.
John 3:16-17 tells us, “For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
God did not hide his love for you. He went on open display of his love for you. He’s not ashamed of you. His love is on public display for you.
Can you see it? Can you see the love dripping, dripping, dripping down the Lamb of God for you?!
P.D.A.
Public display of affection. Public display of love toward you and all of mankind. You say, “Oh, it was all of mankind. Everyone’s included. I’m not that special.” I’d encourage you to silence the enemy. That’s rejection talking, not your spirit. Because out of LOVE, Isaiah tells us that the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all. MY sin was on Jesus. Your sin was personally being taken into account and forgiven. YOU ARE WORTH every drop of blood he shed. Yes, you are special. Thank you, Jesus.
Sin. YES. But reconciliation to the Father was the motivation.
That’s why Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
1 Peter 3:18 says, “Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.”
The proof of his love was salvation and reconciliation back to the Father. Not condemnation.
Do you realize how radically in love God is with you?
As believers we have to become better receivers. We have to become better lovers. We have to sit still and let the Father love on us. Will it feel odd at first? Do all real, growing relationships feel odd at first, particularly ones that we are being vulnerable in? Yes.
But let him in.
Let God love you. Let him minister to you. We are trained so much to work for the Lord but not enough training to actually sit at his feet. Like when he washed Peter’s feet, for example. Yes, it was example for us of how to love others but just as he washed Peter’s feet, he wants to wash yours too. Jesus wants to serve you.
I have found, the more I go to the Father the less of a burden I carry.
The other day I was doing just this. I was in his presence. Laying there resting. Being aware of him, thanking him, speaking his word back to him. Not striving. Just being.
I heard him speak in my spirit and He showed me a picture.
I felt the Lord say, “I am doing surgery and binding up the hemorrhaging inside you.” As I pictured him sewing me up inside. And then sopping the blood up, he showed me a picture of a white towel/guaze.
This is life in the spirit. With the Father. Did I realize I had spiritual hemorrhaging? No. But God knows where we are hurting and what is happening inside.
We need to lay more in the Father’s presence.
Laying our lives on the spiritual operating table and let him open us up to repair and then heal. We have more soul wounds than we imagine. Old ones. New ones. Ones we pretend that aren’t there til we realize we can’t even look someone in the face. Those kinds of wounds.
He is our healer. He is our lover.
What does life look like without love? We see it everywhere.
It looks like an unrefreshment. That’s a made up word but it fits.
It looks like dissatisfaction.
It looks like selfishness.
But the good thing is, we do not have to go without experiencing God’s love.
Ephesians 3:14-21 tells us this is a love that can be experienced.
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
There are people in life that are walking these things out well. People that are living examples of yielding to the Holy Spirit, allowing him/herself to be transform into the image of Love. Into the image of Jesus.
And even sometimes, others show us examples of how to love our own children better. For example, my friend allowing Anne to cut the pizza to “support her culinary desires.” To allow her to serve in the children’s dept., allow her/encourage her to sit in with the adults at small group and speak life and grow in her gifts that have been given to her by the Lord.
See, our children are not outcasts. Although the world sees them that way at times. The world tolerates them and celebrates them but does not understand them. The Father has not cast them out. The Father has chosen them to carry a special piece of his heart to the world that no one else can bring. The Father has chosen to extend mercy in their times of need. Why? Jeremiah 31:3
You are not an outcast either. Jesus’ blood speaks a better word over your life.
Chosen. Adopted. Healed. Forgiven.
As special needs parents sometimes we need to be forgiven. Forgiven for not looking like love. And sometimes we need to forgive our special needs children.
Let everything you do be done on love it says.
It’s time for selfishness to die. That’s not a word of condemnation. That’s a word of freedom. What will it cost? Our surrender. Our obedience. Our loving God more than we love ourselves.
We will be better able to love others when we ourselves are not love starved.
The church lives love starved. But we can live love filled if we will spend time with Love! If we will say, “Here I am. I will let you love me. I will let you speak your words of love over me.”
How much does the Father long for you to sit and let him lavish his love on you and how much delight does it bring to him when we do? It’s what he’s been waiting for. It’s why Jesus died.
You say Jesus died to take away my sin though. Yes, he did but Jesus died to take away your sin to bring you back to the Father. Bring you back to God. It’s all about coming home. This is what the Father wants us to do, sit still and let him love us. It will seem foreign at first because we are trained to do works. Train to bring our prayer needs to him.
I can tell you, if you will rest in him and let him in to love you those prayers will not be as big of a burden for you. Because in simplicity, you ask your Father and know the Father loves you and he has heard you, you can rest.
See, he calls us to live in righteousness.
He’s coming back for a bride made ready.
The promises of God are sure.
The world is desperate for a touch of love.
But if we haven’t been with Love Himself we will have nothing to give to them.
The Bible says the love of many will grow cold.
We find it in Matthew 24:12-14. “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
When we live our lives on the altar in constant communion with the Father, we will stay ablaze. We will stay in love.
We will be love FILLED not love starved.
Hallelujah. Cry out. He will meet you right where you are.
If you don’t know how to know Jesus, go to the “Gospel Video Message” page and meet him there.
Love you in the Lord!
TAKE A MOMENT TO PRAY 