What will make me different?
In the morning hours, my hands shift from the daily Psalm and Deuteronomy readings to 1 John 4, where I find an entire chapter devoted to a love which will call me to act on what I cannot see. The words promise that I will be able to detect the Spirit's work from what is false through the unashamed confession of Jesus--the confession I must hear coming from my own lips. I know the difference between truth and error, NOT by what I see, but through Spirit-form manifesting Himself through my daily choice to love.
I want to be an overcomer because my greater-than-God who lives in the world also lives within me, and He calls me to love everything in it just as He does.
So I will choose love, because I come from God and am re-born through Him, so it stands to reason that everything He births comes from love. I will not try to will the emotion in, I will simply love because God loved first and placed His own love deep into my heart when my filthy soul opened wide. And I re-open to the One who lovingly waters me daily with His Spirit words as He calls me to reflect the love-works of One who has made me different, like Him. He anticipates the unveiling of my knowing that the absolute nothing man could ever make is always expressed in the grace words given, and the forgiving walk-away from judgment when bitterness is the easier choice. He is always found in every act of love, because He is always love.
And when the love-choice becomes habit forming in already willing heart, I will become more and more like the One who is perfect in every action. It's how I'll know that He is the father and I am His child, because His reflection will seep through the you have your father's eyes words of those who recognize the family resemblance, and the mannerisms and choosing steps that direct the siblings to the truest bloodline of a soul made different.
God's abiding will sustain itself through the confident issue of grace handed out in bulk measures today, as Love abides and is easily made known through the greatest kind of overcoming--the change of a will heard through a constant Spirit confession.
I will choose this love over the fear of a punishing glance, a snide remark made by another in the not-so-private room of a house, and when the judgment words vex the soul with the seeming never-end of pain. I will choose love because Love chose me first. First... before the judgment that would certainly fall on the once-called-good creation, before the foundations of the world were ever laid, before a Garden debacle,...I will choose love because He chose love first. It was not a created thing, because He is not. I didn't have to wait for His love to grow and mature because love is in God and IS God Himself; a perfect oneness. The One who came first, first loved and He has changed me so that I will also choose and not wait for the feeling to come. This love had no beginning and will have no end; an un-created choice.
I choose love because I choose to be absent of hate, absent of a grudge, absent of an ignorance that would wait for the coming of a feeling to change the will. I follow His command to love because the I AM LOVE abides within me, and I am merely to be a refection of my Father...a father who teaches his child how to become more like Him: different.
