MAXING OUT ON GOD'S LOVE

Imagine you are dying of thirst in the desert.  You ran out of water and know you are going to die.  Your parched lips and dusty throat have been praying for a  miracle, and so far, none has happened.  You have given up all hope.  Suddenly in the distance you see a cloud of dust heading your way, and you think it might be a car or truck kicking up the dust.  Maybe there is hope after all.

In a few minutes a water truck emerges from the cloud and drives toward you.  The driver gets out of the truck and comes over to talk.  Now there is real hope.  He notices that you are desperately in need of water and so he gives you a speech on his favorite topic, water.

He points out that without water you will die.  He explains a water molecule is made up of one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen, which is why it’s called H₂0.  He describes how lakes and oceans are full of water.  He informs you that hundreds of feet underground there is an aquifer containing millions of gallons of water.  He explains how water comes down from the clouds as rain and then evaporates and condenses to form new clouds high in the sky.  He explains that fog is nothing but water vapor.

He informs you that your body is made up mostly of water and the only way for you to survive is to keep your body hydrated.  He explains the biochemistry of how water is used in the cells of your body.  He tells you about the physiology of water as it circulates through your kidneys and is excreted in the urine.  He spends hours telling you more than you want to know about water.

Suddenly, he jumps back in his water truck and drives off in a cloud of choking dust without giving you anything to drink.  You cannot believe your eyes and ears.  This person could have saved your life and instead of giving you water, he only gave you a lecture.

It’s safe to say you would have preferred he give you a drink and save his speeches for someone else.  Speeches about water will not save your life.  You must experience putting water into you body or you will die.

Water is like God’s unconditional love.  It’s essential for life.  People don’t need a lecture about God’s love nearly so much as they need to experience it.  They need his love to quench the thirst within their heart and mind.

LONG ON KNOWLEDGE AND SHORT ON EXPERIENCE

Most people know nothing about God’s unconditional love.  Even religious people are more likely to talk about it rather than experience it.  If they do experience it, they will probably experience it intellectually rather than emotionally.

The mind is the door through which the power of God’s love flows into your life.  Once it’s in your mind, you experience it intellectually.  Millions of people only experience God’s love intellectually.  Unfortunately, that is not enough to heal damaged emotions.  God’s love must make the trip from your head to your heart in order to change the way you feel.

Many people examine, classify, and wrap God’s love in a tidy little package and store it away in a small corner of their mind.  The most powerful medicine in the universe is hidden on a shelf of the mind where it can't do any good.  Maybe they study it a little.   They might even do research on it and try to understand it better.  But they never immerse themselves in it and allow the most powerful force in the universe to transform their life.  They end up long on knowledge and short on experience.  They will die of thirst in a spiritual desert unless they drink deeply of God’s love and let its refreshing power transform their rational mind and heal their damaged emotions.

Intellectualizing about God’s love is of limited benefit.  Thinking about it is the first step in your journey to wholeness.  Nevertheless, until God’s love makes the trip from your head to your heart, you will never experience its full power.  Once his love has established a beachhead in your heart, the miracle begins and his love changes the way you feel.

DABBLING DOES NOT WORK

If God’s love has not changed the way you feel, chances are you have only been dabbling in it.  God’s smorgasbord of love is always open and you have gone on a diet.  God is ready to immerse you in his ocean of love and you only want to get your toes wet.  God’s love is available twenty-four hours a day and you focus on it for only a few minutes.  You have dammed up the most powerful force in the universe and allow only a trickle of it to flow through your heart and mind.

It’s time to stop dabbling and start doing.  It’s time to open your heart and mind and let God’s love roll through your life.  It’s time to become totally immersed in God’s love so it can straighten out your twisted thinking and heal your damaged distorted emotions.  It’s time to let God give you a clean mind and a pure heart.  It’s time to allow God’s love to make you into a whole person.

God’s love is meant to be a total immersion experience.  You must go all the way with it if you want to experience its power.

The best way to learn a foreign language is through total immersion.  You are not allowed to speak your own language and the only words you hear are those of the foreign tongue.  No dabbling is allowed.  It’s sink or swim, and if you give it your best effort, you swim.  In just a few weeks, you carry on conversations in the new language.

God’s love works the same way.  The most effective way to learn the language of love is through total immersion.  When you jump into God’s ocean of love, the miracle begins and God’s love makes you into a new person.

GOD’S LOVE CHANGES WHO YOU ARE

How does God’s love do its miraculous work?

1.  First, it changes the way you think.
2.  Second, it changes the way you feel.
3.  Third, it changes the way you live.

First, you experience God’s love intellectually, and that changes the way you think.  You need to change the way you think about many things.  When you look at your limitations, you need to change the way you think.  When you look at your failures, you need to change the way you think.   When you look at your past, you need to change the way you think.  When you look at the present, you need to change the way you think.  When you look at the future, you need to change the way you think.  When you look at who you are and what you can do with your life, you need to change the way you think.

Once you start thinking differently, the emotional healing begins and God’s love changes the way you feel. 

Your emotions are the direct result of the thoughts you put into your mind.  When you think new thoughts, you experience new emotions consistent with those thoughts.  Your new thoughts become the musical score for a new emotional symphony that plays in your heart and mind.  When God is the author of your new thoughts, the melody of God’s love starts playing, and good things happen in your life.

God designed your mind to function best when it is under the influence of his love.  When your mind is full of thoughts consistent with his love, your mind is exactly the way God meant for it to be.

God designed your heart so it would experience healthy emotions when it is dominated by his love.  When your heart is full of emotions consistent with his love, your heart is exactly the way God meant for it to be.

Once you start thinking new thoughts and enjoying new positive emotions, another miracle happens.  You start taking new actions.  You even start doing things you could never do before.  New actions mean a new life, and that is exactly what happens.  When God’s love rolls through your heart and mind, you become a new person with a new life.

But that isn't all the good news.  You also establish a new relationship with the Great Physician who will use the power of love to transform your life.  He will not give you a placebo or Love Potion Number Nine.  He will give you the real thing, unconditional love that lasts forever.  No matter what your problems are or how long they have been present, God’s love will work on them until the job is done.  God is in it with you for the long haul.

How long will it take for your life to get better?  That depends.  How much time are you willing to invest in your new life?  There is no specific timetable for improvement.  You write your own schedule of healing based upon the amount of time you spend focusing on God’s love and sending that love to other people.  It's not enough to sit in your easy chair and bask in the warmth of God's love.  You must send God's love to other people in order to experience its full power.  God's love is meant to be a shared experience.  You unleash the full power - the healing power - of God's love when you pass God's love on to others.

Ten minutes of focusing on God’s love is better than no minutes at all, but that doesn't give God much time to fix what ails you.  Dabbling in God’s love is doing things the long hard way.  If you want God’s love to do its miraculous work, you must become totally immersed in it.  You must practice God’s presence every day, all day long.  Only then will your heart and mind be continuously exposed to its healing power.

DYING OF THIRST IN GOD’S OCEAN OF LOVE

Imagine what would happen if you took a large drink of water and decided that since you have experienced what it’s like to drink water, you don’t need to drink it anymore.  You have been there and done that, and it’s time to move on to other things.

No one would be so foolish to do such a thing.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what some people do with God’s love.  They drink deeply of it only one time, and then they move on to other things.  Instead of focusing on God’s love, they focus on the trivial events of life.  Soon they die of spiritual thirst even though they are immersed in God’s ocean of love.

JUMP INTO GOD’S OCEAN OF LOVE

Imagine what would happen if your mother gave you a bath on the day you were born, and after that, she never bathed you again.  For the next eighty years, a drop of water never touched your body.

It wouldn't be long before everyone could tell by the smell it was you when you walked down the street.  Although you might have a few friends, you wouldn't have any close ones.  They could not endure the stench of being near you.  You would only have distant friends and relatives.  There is no such thing as a bath that lasts a lifetime.

God’s love works the same way.  Your mind easily fills up with the toxic waste of the twenty-first century.  If you don’t wash it out of your mind every day, the stench will become unbearable.  You will develop a major case of stinking thinking and your emotional wounds will not heal.  You desperately need a clean mind and a pure heart, and the only way to make it happen is to wash your heart and mind with God’s love every day.

You must jump into God’s ocean of love and allow it to wash you from the top of your head to the tip of your toes.  When you do that, your life is never the same.  You are born spiritually and you become a new person.  Old things pass away and all things become new.  You look at the world with new eyes and listen with new ears.  You think new thoughts, take new actions, and have a new life.

God’s love changes the way you think and feel.  He gives you a clean mind and a pure heart.  Your old way of thinking and feeling is gone.  Your mistakes and failures are cast into his ocean of love.  For the first time in your life, you dare to call God your Father and live as one of his children.  God’s love heals your damaged emotions and washes the toxic waste from your mind.  Your negative feelings and guilt are washed away in a tidal wave of love.

Each day you must jump into God’s ocean of love and have a life changing experience.  Dabbling in it will never do.  This is not something you do just once and the positive effects last for a lifetime.  You must do it every day for the rest of your life.  For as long as you live, you must max out on God’s love.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MAX OUT ON GOD'S LOVE?

1.  You dare to call God your Father.

2.  You have a personal relationship with God based on love.  (You fall in love with God)

3.  You send your love back to God through loving other people. (You fall in love with other people)

4.  You practice God's presence every day all day long.

5.  You give up your need to be right and switch the focus of your life to love.

6. You move in the direction of the dream that God has placed in your heart and mind regardless of the consequences.  You act as if that dream is possible and you work each day to make it happen.

7. You use prayer to do a reality check and align yourself with God's plan for your life.  You trust God's plan because it's good for you and perfect for the type of person you are.

8. You open your heart and mind to the power of God's love.  His love washes the toxic waste out of your mind and heals your damaged emotions.

9. You live congruently as a whole person with your intellect, emotions, and will all heading in the same direction.  You become an Unstoppable, Consistently Positive, Endlessly Persistent, Doer of Dreams.

10. You spend the rest of your life focusing on God's love and putting good things into your heart and mind.

Affirmation:  When I jump into God’s ocean of love, my life is never the same.  I am born spiritually and become a new person.  Old things pass away and all things become new.  I look at the world with new eyes and listen with new ears.  I think new thoughts, take new actions, and have a new life.  Each day I jump into God’s ocean of love and have a life transforming experience.  This is not something I do just once and the positive effects last for a lifetime.  I must do it every day for the rest of my life.  For as long as I live, I will max out on God’s love.