In the course of sharing life with God the Spirit, He changed my heart towards people. Instead of just trying to cope with them, endure them, and change them for my comfort (and their good, of course) — I found myself wanting to love and nourish them.

Because God has nourished me. And being nourished by God — having my heart gently and faithfully loved, changed me. His love has brought out the best in me, those things He deposited in my DNA in my mother’s womb. The things that are meant to be like Him. The things that actually give me life.

That love came with regular doses of gracious truth, slipped in when I was ready. It came with the security of knowing that if I messed up, I wouldn’t lose the Lord’s love or nearness. It came with permission to be a work in progress. It came with encouragement, compassion for my weak places, and commitment to be my friend forever.

The delivery guy for God’s love.

Romans 5:5 teaches us that the love of God is made known to our hearts by the Spirit. That Spirit which our Jesus promised would come and dwell with us after his departure from this earth, is the one who reveals God’s love, causes us to feel it, to be healed and nurtured and taught by it.

Gradually, at first imperceptibly, as God’s love began to heal and reeducate my broken and flawed places — a work in progress, I hasten to add — I found my heart filled with compassion in the place where judgment had been. At times I was surprised by a new and increasing capacity to yield to another in a matter I would have once picked a fight. Occasions that would have once tested the limits of my tolerance began to be met with a graciousness I could truly offer — not something I made myself do because it was right.

You see, over season upon season of knowing God, I had been met with graciousness from Him. That love that overlooks a slight — not excusing it, but looking beyond it (looking over it) to the potential of a better way of being together. God’s secret to transforming us is giving us the best of His faithful, nourishing heart, day by day.

Jesus gave us a new and revealing command about love.

So when Jesus issued His new commandment in John 13:34, his own nourishment from His Father — by means of the same Spirit we know — was surely on His mind:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jesus wasn’t merely insisting that we prove to others that we belong to him by our love; he was alluding to the truth that if we are those who are truly being discipled by the Spirit of Christ, we ourselves will have first received a mighty and faithful love. A love that compels us to offer the same to others. A love that has enlarged our hearts with generosity, graciousness and goodness.

What Jesus commanded won’t be hard for those who have first been established in God’s love. In fact, it won’t feel like a command at all, but a simple reminder, an encouragement, a cheerleading us on in what He knows we can do on the field of life as it tests (proves, reveals) our strength. The strength built in us as we yielded to and fully embraced being God’s beloved child.

How do you become established in God’s love?

If you have not already, go spend your coming days asking the Spirit to make God’s love known to you. To reveal the great depth and width and length and height of it, so you may sink your roots down deep in it, and have your whole being established in it. This is Apostle Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19, a prayer that changed my whole way of knowing God.

The Spirit’s main (and I think, favorite) task is to establish you in God’s faithful love, in ways that you can perceive and experience and know. You were never meant to talk yourself into the fact that God loves you, and make it merely a matter of faith. What begins with faith, with hearing His truth, is meant to go on to become fact for you. Something you don’t have to hold up, but something He keeps giving you. He’s able to do it. The Spirit enables you to experience it. And being on the receiving end of this will will change everything. For the better. For the best. For your fullness of joy.

Want to love others better? Don’t work on loving yourself. How limiting and ultimately pitiful that is compared to the riches of being loved by God. Seek the Spirit’s help in this. Ask for it, seek it, and you will find it — the personal experience of God’s love.

The theme of being established in God’s Love is fully explored in Tonia’s book, Rooted & Established In Love: The Power and Purpose of The Greatest Commandment, available in this website bookstore and on Amazon.com.

This book makes a great small group study.

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