LOVE: the strange emotion of God.

Here we go....

"Just as a man pursues a woman or initiates a relationship so God initiates a relationship with us and enters into our world. God is not emotionally sterile in this pursuit. His righteousness does not negate his emotions for us. Quite the opposite in fact. His righteousness means that his emotions are all the more true and correct about us."

God's emotions are not fallen. They are perfect.

It satisfies His righteousness to set His emotions on us.

WHHHAAATTT??

I have this tendency to beat myself up. It's actually a horribly painful weakness. In recent years I have really set my heart to make Jesus the dream of my life. I want to love His righteousness. I want to love His meekness. I want to love His humility. I want to love his beauty. I want to love His gentleness. etc. etc. etc. I really really do. In loving Him and in loving the beauty of His characteristics, I desssspppppperatttellly...I MEAN DESPERATELY want to become like Him. I want to WANT to become more like Him even more than I already do. I really want to be yoked to Him and marry Him one day. I can't wait to marry Jesus.
I can be really hard on myself when I am not walking in LOVE. I put myself on probation, beat myself up until I learn my lesson, make sure I tell myself how horrible I am for not getting it, and try extra hard to make sure I get it right next time. Kinda transparent, but I am SURE there are others who do the same.

**side note...do you ever feel like when God changes/ shifts/ sanctifies/ corrects us you have to do a lot of trial and error before you really learn how to posture yourself rightly? People are so extreme it's like if God corrects one extreme we automatically default to the other extreme. When that doesn't work we finally surrender (hopefully). Does that make sense?

All that to say...I was refreshed by the Lord today. He is so kind to me. Relentlessly kind to me.

He hit me with this truth. And we all know that it is true. It has always been true in my head, but today it really hit my heart in a new way...so i thought i'd share:

Love is not of man. love is not of this world. True love is ONLY born of God.

I'm not gonna lie, something about that offends me. I have casually told people that I loved them my whole entire life...these people that I "loved" made me feel real good...i liked hanging out with them..they never made me deal with my issues..they never made me mad. i "loved" them. On the contrary, if someone hurt me/ made me mad/ got in my way they were automatically on my "stay away i dont love them" list. Unfortunately, this has always been my default, because somewhere in my wicked heart I have thought this was just, good, and right.

ENTER JESUS. so this light came to this dark DARK earth that did not understand light at all. the darkness hated/ did not understand the light. (JOHN 2:5) He came and introduced these magnificant treasures from heaven to man including humility, servanthood, long suffering, righteousness, mercy, grace, etc. and LOVE. One man walked the earth and in his DNA He carried the treasures of heaven and the fullness of God. These treasures are foreign mysteries to the world of man. We know nothing of them apart from Jesus. We know nothing of love apart from Jesus.

For me this is really refreshing. If i make the mistake of staring at my own weaknesses too long I get tired, discouraged, I want to die, give up, and call the whole thing off..my heart gets so offended. This is why my heart LEAPS for the son of God who takes away the sins of the world. When i stare at Jesus my heart soars and I come alive. I love Him for this. I love Him so so so much for this.

so there is my revelation for the day.

Emily