Love Begins and Ends with…

Does your love have a beginning and an end? Does it depend on the mood, the circumstance, the outcome, or any other influential factors? Is your love tapped out at the end of the day? If so, is it renewed each morning? Or are you running on empty?

One of my focuses this year is to be filled up to overflow. And one of the main things I want to be filled up with is love. Love that isn’t conditional, that doesn’t depend on anything external, just the love that is in me. And I want that to overflow. I recently heard a quote that said you only love as much as you are willing to be inconvenienced. And too often I live my life not wanting to be inconvenienced. I have a schedule, an agenda, the next place to be. So am I willing to go out of my way to love? Too often that answer is no. Sometimes the need will even smack me in the face, and I am still not willing. My heart is only open to my schedule, my life, and my narrow focus. But that is no way to love.

True unconditional love has no beginning and no end. There is no empty, there is no void, there is no but. Real love fills to overflowing. It doesn’t end when there’s a hardship. It doesn’t run out after a long day. It doesn’t alter when circumstances change. The famous love passage says that love never changes. Love keeps no record of wrong. Love is patient.  Am I this kind of loving person? Or do I love when it is easy. I want my eyes to be open to see things differently. I want my heart to be open and real. I want my love to not falter. I want to be filled from the inside. My life is not determined by what happens around me but what I am filled with. So this season may I love from the inside out. And may I love from a place that doesn’t run out.

I think that love starts from loving my God, loving the people he has placed in my life, and loving the person he has created me to be. God is the only example we have of that true love. So the more I know him, the more I know his character, the more I experience him, the more I have open hands and an open heart ready to be filled. There is life to be lived filled with God’s love. “Recognizing God is not the same as coming to Him. Hearing God in your heart is not the same as answering. Working for the kingdom of God does not mean living in the kingdom of God. Christianity is not believing the truths of the Bible; it’s acting upon them and allowing God control of your life. You must respond to God and make the choice to interact personally with Him.” ― Henry T. Blackaby “God’s definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love.” ― Francis Chan He has called me to love wholeheartedly.

So my goal is that my love would be bigger, that it would have no end, that I wouldn’t think about the beginning, that it would be my everything.I want to be inconvenienced. When I feel spent at the end of my day, when being a mom is hard, when life seems to be asking too much, I want to remember the God who loves me more than I even know. And I want to love big in return.