It's all about the LOVE!

Week ONE! (September 10-14)
Nature and Character of God with the esteemed David Painting.
Can I just begin with the fact that I received massive amounts of revelation about God and His love for me this past week...It's been just incredible and massive and overwhelming. I'm still processing all of it and wondering how it all applies so that I can be more whole and more restored and just more of Him and less and less and less of me.

He began with God's nature: He is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (all-present). He is Creative, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Infinite. In His character, He is just, loving, merciful, faithful, self-sacrificial, righteous, forgiving, risk-taking, and a communicator. But most of all HE IS LOVE.
He is LOVE.
LOVE.
That is the very essence of God.
He is LOVE.
He doesn't just love.
He actually is LOVE.
We were created out of His LOVE.
And His Love looks to express itself. After the perfect relationship of the Triune, He had to create to bring relationship that has the very character of God. The characteristics of the people must be like Him. And that likeness to Him is LOVE.

So that means that He embodies I Corinthians 13
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.

Love at heart allows freedom of its own choice. It does not insist on its own way.

During the creation, the Triune paused and counted the cost of creation. Is it worth it? What if people make the choice to not love? And they said it was worth it. All worth it for humans to partake in the love of relationship. It is so important to create that even though there is an incredible cost, it is worth. You are worth it. Just mind-blowing. I feel so saturated in God's LOVE.

We are created to be in relationship with God.
We are not created to work for Him.
We are not created to glorify Him.
We are created to be in relationship with Him. To share in the perfect love of the Triune.

God created things that were good and things that were very good. He looked at man and thought not good...because the man isn't in relationship. God chose to create man with a need that He chooses not to fulfill. He created woman so that man and woman could be in relationship with each other just as He is in relationship with Himself.
God expresses His nature through the filter of His character.

When it comes to choices people typically believe that either God is all-powerful, so if He hasn't stopped the suffering, He must want it there, or that God is trying to teach me a lesson
-OR-
God is all-loving, but given what there is, He must be powerless to do anything about it.

The true meaning is that God intervenes or mitigates the situation and turns good from the evil that has occured. Remain in Christ and in His calling and He is able to bring far more good than the evel the enemy can bring.

If God intervenes in my situations, He's taken away my choice to act and if this influences our choices, our opportunity and ability for relationship is gone. Because love never insists on its own way and since God is love, He will not insist on His own way.

Our primary objective is to have the unhindered, unfettered, unclouded Presence of God.
Be Holy as I am Holy (set apart, different).

Jesus empties Himself of the nature of God so that He can be completely full of love. That's our call. To completely empty ourselves of us so that we can be full of His love. Acting out of His love. Moving out of His love. Being in His love.

It boggles my mind and stirs up my spirit and quenches thirst, but makes me hungry for more. And overwhelms. And overwhelms. And overwhelms.