Bask In God’s Love | 30 Days To Becoming A Woman Of Prayer by Stormie Omartian

Bask In God’s Love

God is love. And He loves you unconditionally. You have to know this with certainty if you want to experience freedom, wholeness, and true success. That’s because God’s love is healing, fulfilling, liberating, edifying, rejuvenating, and calming. Without full acceptance of His love in our lives, we are always striving, worried, anxious, and uncertain. We are unable to find peace.

God’s love is undying and everlasting; His love is always there for you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). We are the ones who put up barriers to receiving it by our own doubts and fears.

Not fully believing God loves us can cause us to do things out of insecurity. God’s love makes us feel secure in ways that human love cannot. God’s love is unfailing; human love isn’t. God’s love is unconditional; human love often puts up hoops for us to jump through and standards to live up to—or down to, as the case may be. God’s love is limitless and healing; human love can be healing too, but it has limits. That’s because God is perfect and people are not. God’s love is forgiving, keeping no record of wrongs. Human love is often exacting, keeping a list of injustices. And while human love can make us feel better about ourselves, God’s love transforms us.

Many of us don’t feel worthy of God’s love. We think we have failed in so many ways that He must surely not love us so much anymore. Or we feel unlovable because of unloving things people have done to us in our past.

When we ask Jesus into our lives, the Holy Spirit of God is in our hearts. He is love and He is eternal. So we have eternal love in our

hearts. Can it be, then, that the things you or I do out of a pure heart filled with God’s love will have an eternal aspect attached to them? Is that part of laying up treasures in heaven? (Matthew 6:19-20).

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew

6:21). If so, then we can’t afford to not be a receiver of and a channel for, the love of God in this world.

If you doubt God loves you, go before Him and ask Him to help you sense His presence and His love. In order to heal, be made whole, and become enriched in your spirit and soul, you must do this often until it becomes part of you and is no longer something you have to grapple with. Going before God in worship and prayer, and thanking Him that He is the God of love, is the most wonderful, healing experience. Every time you do that, He will pour His love into you and it will grow. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Don’t just receive the idea that God loves you in your mind. Get it into your heart. Say, “Jesus loves me, this I know” 50 times a day, if necessary, until you become convinced. Invite God’s presence— which is the presence of pure, unconditional love—with your praise. When you feel discouraged, go before God and thank Him for His love. Thank Him that He died for you, and now you will live forever with Him. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

How God’s Love Changes Your Life

God’s love gives you everlasting life. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

God’s love draws you to Him. “I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them” (Hosea 11:4).

God’s love lets you live through Him. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only

begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).

God’s love paid for your sins. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

God’s love gives you access to Him. ‘We have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).

God’s love frees you from fear. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

God’s love gives you true success. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Receiving God’s love frees you from having to exact love from others. God’s love allows you to not keep score about how loving they are, or if they are meeting your need for love or not. The love of God is not just a feeling you have. It is God’s presence within you and around you. No matter what your concept of God’s love is, it is so much greater than you think. And you will spend a lifetime trying to comprehend it.

God’s Love Frees You To Love Others

The more you receive the love of God, the more it flows through you to others. In fact, our love for other people is the most compelling sign of all to an unbeliever. It was the love of God I saw in other people that drew me toward the Lord. It is the love of God in me that has filled me with love for others—even people in other places whom I don’t know.

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34) . Jesus loved us so much that He laid down His life for us. We don’t have to die for others, but we can lay down our life in other ways.

The Bible says that if we don’t have love in our heart for others, we have nothing and whatever good we think we do, we will not benefit from it. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal…

and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-2). God wants to fill your heart with His love so that you can extend it to others.

Twelve Ways To Extend

God’s Love To Others

There are countless ways to extend God’s love to others, but here are just a few found in Romans 12:9-21, a passage of Scripture that could also be titled “How to Act Like a Christian.”

1. “Let love be without hypocrisy” (verse 9). Do not pretend to love others when you actually don’t. If you have no love in your heart for someone, pray for them every day and God will give you His heart of love for them. Don’t just say you love someone, show it. Do and say things that can be defined as acts of love. Ask God to fill your heart with His love and show you how to share it.

• “Abhor what is evil” (verse 9). You are a person who is already sensitive to evil or you wouldn’t even be reading this book. But our society has become so filled with evil that we can become numb to some of the “tamer stuff,” and so it no longer offends us as it should. Ask God to show you if that is happening to you. Say, “Holy Spirit, help me to be grieved by everything that grieves You. Help me to detest any acts or words that are unloving or sinful.” When you do this, you not only show your love for God; you also show your love for others. That’s because when you have godly standards, others feel

safe around you.

• “Cling to what is good” (verse 9). It is not enough to be repulsed by evil; we must actively cling to the Lord and all that is good. Good is everything that is motivated by God’s love. Cling to the love of God in your heart and let it be the guide for all you do.

• “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (verse 10). Being kind and affectionate to others—loving them the way you would a beloved brother or sister—manifests by honoring them and putting their needs before your own. Pray, “Lord, help me to take someone else’s needs into consideration before my own.” Showing love means not being indifferent toward others.

• “Not lagging in diligence” (verse 11). This means being diligent in all we do—not just being diligent sometimes, when we feel like it, or when we want to. It means loving others all the time.

• “Fervent in spirit” (verse 11). Being fervent in spirit also means being fervent in prayer. It’s being passionate about the things God cares about. It means fervently loving others and passionately loving God.

• “Serving the Lord” (verse 11). Think of everything you do as service to God—and that includes loving others. Believe that because you love God so much, you will do anything for Him and everything to please Him—even loving the unlovable.

• “Continuing steadfastly in prayer” (verse 12). Praying all the time about everything is the way to live a praying life. One of the most important things we pray about is other people and their needs. That is one of the most loving things to do.

• “Distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality” (verse 13). Ask God to show you the needs of others. Of course, you can’t meet every need of every person, but God can. Show the love of God by giving in any way you can—as the Holy Spirit leads—to meet the needs of people around you.

1. “Rejoice with those who rejoice” (verse 15). Even when everything is going wrong in your life, and you see people rejoicing over things you have been longing for, rejoice with them. Resist any tendency to feel envy. That is the opposite of love.

1. “Weep with those who weep” (verse 15). There are so many people hurting right now who would be blessed by your love and compassion. They need you to show empathy and weep with them. That show of love can change someone’s life.

1. “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (verse 18). Do all you can to avoid being offensive, difficult, divisive, or contentious with others. Ask God to help you always be peaceful, cooperative, agreeable, and pleasant.

Faith, hope, and love are lasting. But the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13) . That’s because God is love and He is eternal. When we go to be with the Lord, we won’t need faith and hope anymore, because we will see Him face-to-face. But we will bask in the love of God forever.

Prayer Power

Lord, I thank You that You are the God of love. Thank You for loving me even before I knew You (Romans 5:8). Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to die for me and take on Himself all I deserve. Thank You, Jesus, that You have given me life with You forever, and a better life now. Your love heals me and makes me whole. “You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You” (Psalm 16:2).

I know there is a great dimension of healing and wholeness that can only happen in the presence of Your love. Enable me to open up to Your love working in my life as never before. Wash over me with Your love today. Fill my heart with Your love in greater measure so that I can be the whole person You created me to be.

Perfect Your love in me by helping me to love other people the way that You love them. Give me Your heart of love for others at all times. I pray I will be so filled with Your love that it overflows to other people in a way that they can perceive it. Show me the loving thing to do in every situation.

How grateful I am that nothing can separate me from Your love, no matter where I go or what I do—not even my own failings (Romans 8:35-39). Thank You that because of Your love for me, I am more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37). Thank You, Lord, that Your unfailing love and mercy surround me because I trust in You (Psalm 32:10).

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Word Power

I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor

principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Romans 8:35

God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4-6

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:7-8

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Matthew 22:37