God’s love | abrillianthope

This is Annalise. She is 3 and full of belly laughs and little girl sweetness. She is plump and squishy and I kiss her cheeks at least 100 times a day. She loves snuggles and pretends to be a cat for most all of the day, often responding with meows instead of words. She has an absolute breakdown in the morning if I get up and make my coffee without her. She loves to help make the coffee and can’t understand why I don’t wake her up. The problem with this situation is that my goal is to get up and make my coffee without her, only because mama needs the quiet. When her feelings are hurt she will say “you have ruined my heart!” – her big blue eyes and bottom lip telling the story. She is so precious and i find myself clutching at the fleeting baby moments.

Parenting is such an incredible thing. The joy and pain (and it is both!) of watching your children grow. People tell you it goes fast, but its like you breathe and the moment is gone. They are bigger, more independent, more beautiful. Just as they should be.

Lately I have been praying about parenting these 4 kids we have. I was telling the Lord that I really long for them to KNOW Him, to know His voice, to encounter the Holy Spirit. I was asking for wisdom in how to do this practically, in a way that is worked out in every part of our lives, not just in a devotional around the breakfast table.

As I was praying I felt like the Lord was saying “Your job, Sarah, is to love them hard. Love them hard and well and give them opportunities”. This seems so simple and in many ways it is! But I sat there thinking about it, it grew layers. I could see His heartbeat in it.

You see He is so gentle with us. We have this free will to choose Him. He is always giving us opportunities to grow deeper with Him.

In my parenting I can’t make my kids choose Him, but I can sure give them opportunities to encounter Him. Truly encountering Him is the most life-changing experience I know. I can lead them to the well that never runs dry!

This is changing the way I approach discipling my kids and even how we plan for the future. We want to give our kids opportunities to travel and fall in love with the people and cultures that are so close to God’s heart.

We want to pray with our kids and then give them opportunities to hear from the Lord. We want to give them opportunities to serve and pour out their lives as they see need and identify unique ways they were made to answer those needs.

As I was thinking over these parenting things, the Lord opened my eyes to see that He is constantly doing this same thing with me. He is loving me so well. Constantly pouring out a waterfall of His unfailing love and grace over me. He is also constantly giving me opportunities to go deeper with Him, to be used by Him. I can choose to stay safe and comfortable, or to adventure with HIm. He will take me a deep as I am willing to go. As I write those words my heart pounds because I have clutched safety for so long! And yet my heart longs to run with Him!

My prayer today is that you and I will know, in the depths of who we are, how deeply loved we are. That from that place we would have eyes to see the opportunities He is giving us to bring life, love and freedom to those around us.

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Yesterday afternoon shouts of joy erupted in this house. We had been waiting for weeks for snow to fall. We had watched the snow line creep down the hills around our home, so white, so beautiful. Even months ago when we were still living in Southern California, snow was the talk of the family. When people would ask our kids if they were excited about moving, they would reply with an affirmative “YES! Because it snows there!”.

My kids have only seen snow once. In what felt like a miraculous, once every 25 years moment, we had snow in Southern California on a new year’s eve in the middle of the night. We woke up the kids so they could see it and experience it. That was two years ago and it didn’t stick around long.

Now we live in a place that will have snow every winter, probably all winter.

Yesterday was the first. The first snowflakes fell, gently, swirling tiny snowflakes. The excitement was loud and wild. We all stood by the window and soon spilled out the sliding glass door to experience it. Snowflakes on the face. There is nothing like it.

It’s true that this will soon be normal and perhaps we will be weary of snow and winter. For now it is new and so magical. I love watching my babies encounter the gloriousness of it.

I sat in the quiet hours this morning, reading, praying, connecting, indeed coming to Jesus in weakness. There is so much that I don’t have nailed down, so much growing that I have to do. As I came to Him this morning, He didn’t want to talk about that. He wanted to tell me about His love.

He spoke to me about how His love will never be exhausted, how I will never come to the end of it. How it will always hold wonder and how it is like a vast expanse of territory that I get to explore. It’s ever present. It’s for now, for this moment and for every moment that will come my way today.

Funny how I come to Him and want to review my failings. He wants to enfold me in joy. He wants me to walk as a care-free child experiencing snow for the first time. Even today. Even in the grown up world I live in that has real problems, where the world around me holds real suffering and real hard things. Even in this world I can experience His love, I can flesh it out, I can explore it. It never runs dry. It fills me up to overflow so it can spill into the lives of others. It’s so simple. I don’t have to try harder to be better, to be more. All He asks of me is that I surrender to His love. All the other things of growing and becoming are fruit of reveling in His love.

If today finds you tired and weary, I invite you lift your face. Experience the snowflakes of His love. Swirling around, so gentle. Let Him sing over you. He is so for you. He is all around you. He has depths of love that you have never seen.