Welcome to December. I was planning to write about being a blessing and loving the hard people, but rather than adding another thing to the list, do you know what I believe God may be asking of us this Christmas season? He may be asking us to love Him.
If we made a pile of our priorities this Christmas season and asked God to blow away the things that at the root are not the love of Him…we may be standing with an empty plate.
He isn’t asking for decor, pretty dresses or Christmas cards. Our God is asking for a heart positioned towards Him. But where does love for God come from? A love for God comes from the Source. It comes from Him.
If you want to love God, ask Him to ignite that love in you, and from His overflow of that love, He will take care of everything else.
In perfect love, there is rest. When love is pure, and when we trust that we are loved back, there is rest. As we think about this December, I wonder if we could choose to rest in Him? Could we trust in the perfect love of our Father giving His Son to us and could we rest? In return, could we say, “God, here is all of me,” and offer ourselves to Him?
If we do that, I believe our pace will change. I think our days will have more meaning. Even if our calendars stay the same, with our eyes on our God and our hearts offered to Him, our follow will more accurately reflect His heart and reframe even the common parts of our days.
We can ask God to teach us to love Him. To create in us a love that is compelling. When we do, we will naturally position our God as everything, and when God is everything, then we naturally become His hands and feet to love the people He loves and care for the people He cares for. We trust Him to fill the gaps and give us the capacity, and when we do, we live free. Our hearts are fresh and our burden is light because our God holds it all in His hands. He refills and replenishes our souls with the great care of the Good Shepherd, and in that spirit of Advent, we can rest.
