With All Our Heart!

God lives and works today, and he loves today. We can only share his power and life when we also share his love. This love he has revealed to us through the sacrifice of his Son, and this love he gives to us that we might fulfill the true purpose of our life.

Today's meditation, With All Our Heart by Besselia Schlink, calls us to return to him the love he so longs to receive from us. Who can declare who Jesus is? Only those to whom he has revealed himself in love. For it is not the angels and cherubim to whom he gives his personal love.

It's to the sons of men, to sinners, that he has opened his heart, whom he loves with a great love, and from whom he seeks love in return. Sinners become God's beloved children through the love and sacrifice of his Son. We are created and redeemed in order to reach the fulfillment of our life for time and eternity.

To love him who first loved us. Our relationship to Jesus has, for the most part, become a mere matter of the mind. We say and know that Jesus lives.

We know who he is, the Son of God who carried our sins to the cross, and we confess that we belong to this Jesus Christ if our faith is attacked or even persecuted. But Jesus demands more. He longs for our love.

A legend tells of a man who served our Lord Jesus in his vineyard all his life and entered eternity. The angels who fetched him showed him a coin which was the profit of his life for eternity. It was a big and heavy coin, and he was very happy about it.

But one angel said, Now your coin has to be reduced to its elements and then weighed again, and only those parts which contain love will count towards the weight. When the angel returned, only one little grain was left over. For only to such a small extent had this servant of God done his work in personal and sacrificial love for Jesus.

He who is love seeks only love from his own. But what is this love, and to whom is it given? It is the love of sinners. Sinners like the prodigal son experience not only forgiveness but abundant love.

Such abundant, incomprehensible love turns sinners into the great loving souls who must love Jesus and return with all their hearts. Only of love, it is said, love never ends. Faith will cease, for in heaven we shall see.

But love, which is blossomed here in the darkness of faith and waits with great longing to be with the Beloved, displays all its glowing fire on seeing Jesus face to face. So our fate for all eternity depends upon whether we accept the call to love Him with a deep love, with all our strength, and with all our heart. So all that I have I will give Him.

I'll sacrifice all I hold dear. My whole life to Jesus belong me. My heart sings my love to reveal.

You have been listening to a program written by Basilea Schlink of the Little Land of Canaan. To learn more about how God lives and works today, visit us at our website, www.canaan.org. That's K-A-N-A-A-N dot org. If you contact us, we would be happy to send you a free inspirational booklet.

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