Loved...

I'm not sure whether my thoughts are of blessing to you but I do pray and hope that they are. I don't write for any reason other than to express the things God shows me so in a way I write this for myself, but I do hope that what I share might bless you also.

Every morning I spend a little time in the Word.

Contemplate with me these words from Ephesians 1: 6. It says this,

'...to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.' 

Another version puts it like this,

'to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.'

The point is we are, today, now, at this very moment 'in the Beloved.'

We are loved, immeasurably, uncontainably, unconditionally, eternally loved not because of what we have done but because of what He, our Lord Jesus Christ, has done.
We are loved because we are in 'the Beloved.'

I contemplated this truth and I thought of John, the apostle. He wrote John's gospel and there he describes himself as 'one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.' Some thinks that this is suggesting that Jesus had some level of special relationship with John. This is nonsense! The point of John's statement is that John knew Jesus loved him; He had a revelation of the love of Jesus for him, personally. It had been revealed to John, by the Holy Spirit, the length, the breadth, the height and the depth of the love of Jesus for him, personally.

You know one thing the enemy does not want you to know is that you are loved. He didn't want Jesus to know He was loved by the Father. Remember when Jesus was baptised by John (the Baptiser) in the Jordan River? As John baptised Jesus the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven declared, "YOU ARE MY BELOVED SON, IN YOU I AM WELL_PLEASED" (Luke 3: 22). Immediately following this magnificent anointing we find Jesus in the wilderness experiencing the temptation and the enemy comes to Him and says, " If You are the Son of God..." Do you notice the enemy forgot to add 'Beloved' Son? God Himself had just declared Jesus as Beloved but the enemy chose to leave out this truth, because the enemy is a liar and has been from the beginning, and Beloved he is doing the same to you when he tries to convince you that you are not loved.

You know there is another thing to consider about the baptism of Jesus? God declares of Jesus that He is well-pleased. How is this possible because Jesus hadn't done anything yet? No water had been turned into wine, no blind man set free from his blindness, no woman bleeding for twelve years had been made well, no woman bent double had been stood up straight from eighteen years of looking at, being consumed with her only view of life, the dust and dirt and rubbish of life without Jesus.
You see this shows us that the love of the Father is not determined by what we do; it wasn't determined by what Jesus did. It is not determined by our works. It is not determined by our faithfulness. The love of the Father for You is solely and only determined by the TRUTH that GOD IS LOVE! It is His Grace, Jesus Christ Himself, that lavishes love upon us. Grace is His unmerited favour, expressed in the person of Jesus that loves us, nothing else. The expression of LOVE is seen in the cross and that cross is a finished work and in its completeness we are COMPLETE; completely loved, completely blessed, completely glorified, completely honoured, completely faithful, complete, complete, complete (how many times need I say it before we believe it?)...not in us, in Him, He is EVERYTHING!

Remember the woman bent double? I love this picture. This woman for eighteen long years could only see the dirt, dust and rubbish. It is a picture to us of our lives without Jesus; all we can 'see' is the dirt, dust and rubbish of our life; we have nothing else. If we are sick all we can see is the sickness, if we are poor all we can see is the poverty, if we have a crisis in our lives all we can see is the crisis. Oh blessed day! One day into the woman's view came two feet, the feet of Jesus. He told her she was 'set free' and He put His hand on her and she stood up. What did she see? His wonderful, beautiful face! The dirt, dust and rubbish was replaced with His glorious face! I don't believe she ever lost sight of that face.

You know not long after those two feet, and those hands that touched in healing love were pierced through with the nail of our sin expressed in the brutality of the crucifixion. As Jesus bore our sin God, His Father, turned His back on His Son and the anguish of His cry, 'My God, My God why have You forsaken Me?' As He hung there our sins were laid on Him, all our sickness, poverty, crisis, all our need was nailed to Him, and when it was done He gave up His life. The soldier pierced His side with a spear and blood flowed down and that blood flows today cleansing us. Beloved, there is power in the blood of Jesus, not only for salvation but for restoration, righteousness, supply, blessing, grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. Please believe it, and receive it!

Beloved, I call you that for that is what you are, the Apostle Paul prayed that enormous prayer in Ephesians chapter 3...

'that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.'

 John knew that Jesus loved him, he knew the breadth of The Love who removed our sin as far as east is from west; he knew the length of The Love that determined that Jesus set His face as a flint and went all the way to Calvary on our account; he knew the height of The Love who went in to the highest place, the Holiest of Holies, the very presence of God, with His own blood and was accepted and we are accepted in Him; he knew the depth of The Love who having gone into very depths of hell on our account so that we might be set free from having to experience the consequences of our inherited sin.
Oh what love!
Truly, truly, truly we can say with John the Apostle in 1 John 4: 10,

'In this (please read verse 9 for the 'this') is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propritiation for our sins.' 

Oh we are so loved!
Beloved receive His love!
Do nothing today but receive His love for you.
Put aside the thought that you are blessed because of your faithfulness to Him but receive the absolute truth, the freedom of the truth because truth sets us free, of the fact that you are blessed today because He loves you, HE JUST LOVES YOU!
God, Almighty God, today, right now, looks at you, even with your mustard seed size faith, and sees you bathed in the glory and purity and righteousness of His own Son, Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah!
Rejoice and declare with me...
We give thanks to the Lord for He is Good. Hallelujah! His Love, Mercy and Grace endure forever and ever; for me, for my family and for WTL. Amen and amen!