God’s Love and His Purpose for Us
God is Love. I pray and commune with our Heavenly Father throughout my day. I have conversations with Him about big and little things as they walk into my daily activities.
On a recent quiet morning, our Heavenly Father whispered on my heart to share the love He has for us with others. Even when we think we have stumbled and are not worthy, He always loves us. We are his beautiful children. He created us as image bearers of His love.
For here is the way he loved the world-He gave his only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting love.
John 3:16 (TPT)
He forgives and loves us. All he asks of us it to love Him and follow His commandments, to have faith and be victorious in all we do.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah is God’s spiritual child and has been fathered by God himself. And everyone who loves Father God loves his children as well. This is how we can be sure that we love the children of God: by having a passionate love for God and by obedience to his commands. True love for God means obeying his commands, and his commands don’t weigh us down as heavy burdens. You see, every child of God overcomes the world, for our faith is the victorious power that triumphs over the world. So who are the world conquerors, defeating its power? Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
1 John 5:1-5 (TPT)
I was reading some memoir notes penned by Lilias Trotter (1853 – 1928) about the many beautiful things presented to her during her years of missionary work in her beloved land of North Africa. Her deeply felt words tell the story of how she chose to make a life-altering decision. An artist, her life journey was transformed by fulfilling her years with God’s love and purpose. Her artistic heart guided her to see beauty in all things, just as God sees beauty in us through all seasons.
“Our works will follow us. God may use, by reason of the wonderful solidarity of His Church, the things that He has Wrought in us, for the blessings of souls unknown to us; as these twigs and leaves of bygone years, whose individuality is forgotten, pass on vitality still be the new-born wood-sorrel. God only knows the endless possibilities that lie folded in each one of us!”
Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross
Lilias scribed the following sentence into her journal on a long day in Algiers in the early 1900s: God only knows the endless possibilities that lie folded in each of us!
In the book, Images of Faith: Reflections Inspired by Lilias Trotter, author Miriam Huffman Rockness writes, “We have no idea how God will use those things we do and say, great or small, for His purposes.” As I reflect upon these thoughtful words distanced by over a century in time, I realize that it is not complicated to live a life filled with purpose for God. If we are willing to let our hearts be transformed in God’s love, and if we are willing to walk in faith for His purposes in everything we do great or small, without waiting to see the outcome, we will be truly free. We can place our trust in Him for all things.
Ms. Huffman writes that we do not know that what is sown for eternal purposes will “pass on vitality” after our own “individuality is forgotten”. And, that is what counts the most: to be faithful to our understanding of His plan for us. She concludes with Lilias’ final challenge in the Parables of the Cross:
“Shall we not let Him have His way! Shall we not go all lengths with Him in His plans for us. No, as these green things upon thy earth’ in their unconscious but with the glory of free choice! Shall we not translate the story of their little lives into our own?”
After reading these gifted words, I was reminded of the butterfly -- as they represent a sense of freedom and restoration of the soul much like our hearts as they transform with God’s love in a discovery of joyous blessings through all seasons.
What a wonderful time for us to open our hearts more to the discovery of the endless possibilities that our Heavenly Father has enfolded in each of us.
So lift your hands and thank God for his marvelous kindness
and for all his miracles of mercy for those He loves.
How he satisfies the souls of thirsty ones.
Psalm 107: 8-9 (TPT)