Beloved

Over and over in the new testament we find the word, "Beloved." God calls you His beloved. There is radical amazement in these words. Are you able to define yourself radically as the one beloved by God? The basis of your personal worth is not your possessions, your talent, your reputation, or your achievement. Your worth is anchored in the reality that you are deeply loved by God. When I draw life and meaning from any other source other than my belovedness, I have just swapped the pearl of great price for cheap glass.

Love originates from God. It is a love that causes the human spirit to marvel. When Paul meditated on the love of God, all he could do was to cry out, "how high, how deep, and how wide is this love!" Love is powerful. Love will
change you. Love will charge the atmosphere around you. Love is what you were created for. Confidence in this love will intimidate the enemy. The original purpose of our lives is to discover the truth of our belovedness. God intended for our identity to rest in the relentless tenderness, kindness, and compassion of the One who knows us best and loves us best. God created us for union with Himself. That is the original purpose of our lives. Being the beloved is our identity. It is the core of our existence. No wonder John could declare in 1 John 4:18, "In love, there can be no fear for fear is driven out by perfect love." He understood clearly, "I am the one Jesus loves," as he laid his head on Jesus' breast, touching the heartbeat of the greatest Lover in the universe. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father (John 14:9)." Jesus understood fully the tenderness and compassion of the Father's heart because He fully knew He was the Father's Son. He did nothing on His own, but only what His Father told Him. Everywhere He went, He lavished the indiscriminate love of the Father to the moral failures, the irreligious, the politically suspect, the abandoned hopeless types, the cripples the lepers, the possessed, and the sick. What kind of dangerous and naïve love is this? It is a love that loves without limits. It is the lavishing love of the Father whose heart aches for deep and intimate relationship with those called the children of God.

Beloved, you and I represent those same types. We are like those people whose hearts have been awakened to the truth of our belovedness. Like Paul, we can echo, "The love of Christ compels me (2 Cor. 5:14)." "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39)," our Lover!

Let's live with a fierce longing for more of God and with an unyielding resolve to live in and
out of the truth of our belovedness. Let's live today and give glory to God simply by being ourselves… the beloved.

Taken in part from newsletter of Singing Waters Ministry, Canada by Donna Parachin