Daily Devotionals

Devotional: March 4th

For Reading and Meditation:
     John 12:20-33

The love for God that burns in our hearts must never be seen as the fruit of our labor, as if it is something we manufacture. Seeing the love of God for us, our own heart responds with love. We give love for love. We cannot help it. Let's be done with the idea that love for God is something we work at. It issues forth in good works, of course, but it begins in contemplation of how much we are loved. I often tell my students that they cannot love until they have been loved. By this I mean that love is a response. Our souls must receive love before they can give out love. Those who did not receive much love from their parents complain at this stage: "I can't love God because my soul was never properly prepared to love; my parents didn't love me." That is a problem I agree, but it must never be seen as an insoluble problem. No one who stands at Calvary and sees God dying for them on that tree can ever argue that because they were not loved by their parents they cannot now receive God's love. If they really believe that, then they are saying that God's love is balked by the adverse influence of human conditioning. God's love will only flow into us if we let it, and if we really want it. To desire it is like the touch of the hand on a spring blind; the blind is released and the sunlight flows in. Just to want His love is enough; He will do the rest.

O God, forgive me if I have used excuses to barricade my heart against Your love. I gaze once more on Calvary and open my heart to allow its mighty magnetism to draw my soul toward You in a way it has never been drawn before. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

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