Foundation: To Love God Back

I've been graduated from G42 for almost two weeks and am officially back in the wonderful state of Colorado for the foreseeable future. There are incredible things in the works and the Spirit is moving in mighty ways. Soon, two other unreasonable women from my G42 class will be moving here and together, we will be making a home specifically to create space for others to encounter of the manifest presence of God through the way we love. More updates soon to come including how God is continuing to move my coffee shop dream forward (eek!!).

God used G42 to deconstruct and reconstruct my heart. He laid an infinite foundation of love with four vital signs:

Be loved by God.

Love Him back.

Love yourself.

Love others.

Last week I posted the first: Be Loved By God.

Here is the second:

LOVE HIM BACK

So the other day, I asked God a question. “What’s the best way I can love you, God? Because, I love you, you know and us humans, well, we talk about Love languages but somehow I don’t think that will work with you. I think I’m going to need a Kingdom translation to understand how it is you feel most loved.” And you know what He told me? Profoundly simple and simply profound. He said, “the best way you can love me is by receiving and believing.”

What?! But God, what about all my doing, achieving, fixing, thinking, regulating, adapting, completing, producing, figuring, adjusting, earning, gaining, questioning, reaching, attaining and performing? What about all those times I sacrificed for you? Don’t you remember the times I bent over backwards for you? What about loving you with all my heart, soul and strength? Surely there must be something I can do to repay? And then, swept away by His eyes swirling with love, he gently derailed my life locomotive on purpose and set me on my feet to begin walking with him. Each step we took, deeper into His heart, he spoke words of heaven into my being.

“Sweet girl, welcome to the upside down kingdom where there is nothing you can do for me but say ‘thank you’. Loving me means allowing me to love you into a new state of existence. Unlearning and uncovering my original masterpiece. Your success is in your willingness to traverse the wilderness from doing to being for it is simply out of your being, I’m loved best. And in that state, of trust and awe, your being beats with a heart, hot and red. It’s my home, my favorite place to lay my head.”

"The truth is,” He explained, hand interlaced with mine, “love is a choice - a decision made on purpose - and you love Me by choosing to believe when I call you chosen, purchased, adopted, beloved, I actually mean it. It’s in your believing, you let me fill you with all joy and peace, and together we abound in hope. It’s choosing Christ-formation by renewing your mind, reclaiming every neural pathway as a straight shot, a one way ticket to the Divine. And in believing and receiving, your heart, soul and strength are rooted in the soil I intended them for and they, like the mustards seeds they are, grow slow and steady, into a giant tree of unshakable faith, the very thing that pleases Me. It’s the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen."

"To love Me is to share with me the space I created, forever remembering who you are and that you’re never alone. It’s walking on water and throwing your nets on the other side of the boat. You love me by welcoming in the light, no matter how squinty eyed and choosing life over and over again, knowing darkness only takes up the space that you give it. You love Me by risking, your heart wide open, tuning your frequency and matching your stride. It’s constantly abiding, dwelling in your heart home with me. Always and forever, me in you and you in me. Receiving and believing, you being filled with the fullness of me, letting it splash out and drench everyone around you, that, my dear, is how you love me.”