Can I just have a minute to talk to you about the kind of love I hope you have today, that I hope you have everyday. Do you know how to have an abiding love?
Faith based living,  Marriage

Do you know how to have an Abiding Love?

June 14, 2016 /

Can I just have a minute to speak into your soul today? I want to talk to you about the kind of love I hope you have today, the kind of love I hope you have everyday, an abiding love.

Abiding love is safe, enduring, permanent, sacrificial love.

Our worship pastor once read to us from John 15, verses about abiding love, the love of the Father that Christ demonstrated for us through his life of purity and sacrifice.

And I just wanted to sit down in the middle of those verses and ABIDE. Like curve into an cozy chair by the fire, swathed in a rich blanket.

Woman in chair looking away from camera toward a window holding a cup.

Abide means to continue, remain, survive, last, persist, stay.

I wanted to hang out in those verses, because I never knew how to love purely, without all the human confusion we put into it, until I knew how deeply I am loved by Him.

I was wiping away tears by the time the worship pastor finished sharing that day. God’s love has a way of touching my heart that makes me want to drop everything and just stay in His presence.

John 15:9 ESV  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

Christ invited me – you – to abide in His love, the kind of love God has for Christ and us. I can only look at my daughter and imagine God’s pure love for Christ. Wistfully, I wanted to rest there and be held by His truth.

I wanted to sit down in those verses wrapped in a cozy blanket and rest in His abiding love. Click To Tweet

Can I just have a minute to speak into your soul today? I want to talk to you about the kind of love I hope you had today, the kind of love I hope you have everyday, abiding love.

John 15:16a ESV  You did not choose me, but I chose you . . .

Powerful stuff – Being chosen. We tend to think in this Christian walk that we made some big decision to choose God, but we really just surrendered to His already having chosen us.

He chose us before the formation of the world. While I was a dirty mess of a sinner, I was already CHOSEN, set apart for His purpose.

How differently I have lived since understanding this truth. There is a confidence to knowing I am His beloved daughter.

And I really like that.

But when I heard this verse, I wanted to lean over to my husband and whisper “I chose you.”



John 15:9 ESV  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

In my still human way, I’m trying to learn how God has loved me and love my husband with that kind of love, a love that gives up me to serve him.

I chose him the day he proposed in the middle of “an arrest”. And, I chose him the day we said I do. I choose him the days he is grumpy and selfish.

Even when our dreams for the future seem hopelessly out of sync, I still choose him.

But I wonder if my husband really understands how much I choose to remain in his arms, seek his presence, ache for him. Does he understand he can rest in my love?

The confidence I have in Christ is the confidence I want to share with those I love. I want my husband to know my love is abiding love.

He can rest there. It is permanent because it is God’s love for him through me (when I remember to get out of the way.)

When I try to do it under my own steam, I’m left wrung out, cranky, ragged.

But when I spend time in God’s presence, the Holy Spirit gives me an often supernatural love for my family.

What does an abiding love look like in real life?

It listens without rushing to speak.

Abiding love takes five seconds to fold his towel, put his laundry away, to serve instead of getting frustrated. It chooses to be loving even when he chooses to be unlovable.

Abiding love debates ideas, not each other. It doesn’t say in anger, that was the last straw. Instead, abiding love pauses and says, I’m frustrated right now, but I love you. Can we finish this once I’ve had a chance to pray and think?

An abiding love doesn’t get caught up in the false trappings of love, even if we enjoy them, but embraces the myriad ways real love shows up in the day to day. It hungers to be the first to say I’m sorry and to even forgive without asking for an apology.

I pray that you have Christ’s abiding love, a real love on this day we often celebrate the wrong things, that His love abides in you. I pray you abiding love through friends and family too.

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