I want to share this excerpt from an Andrew Murray devotional on God’s love. If we don’t learn to receive God’s love in our own hearts, we will never truly be able to love the people around us. Let God speak to your heart, as he has mine, from a man of God whose words still live on today.

"As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love." John 15:9

“As the Father loved me”. How can we rightly comprehend this love? Lord, teach us. God is love, love is His very being. Love is not an attribute, but the very essence of His nature, the center around which all His glorious attributes revolve.

As one of His redeemed ones, you are His delight, and all His desire is to you, with the longing of a love that is stronger than death, and which many waters cannot quench. His heart yearns for you, seeking your fellowship and your love. If it were needed, He would die again to possess you. As the Father loved the Son, and could not live without Him—this is how Jesus loves you. His life is bound up in yours; you are to Him inexpressibly more indispensable and precious than you can ever know.

When it was needed, He sacrificed His throne and crown for you. He did not count His own life and blood too dear to give for you. His righteousness, His Spirit, His glory, even His throne—all are yours. This love holds nothing back, but in a manner than no human mind can grasp, makes you one with itself. O wondrous love!

Love gives all, but also asks all. It does so not because it begrudges us what has been given, but because without this, it cannot get possession of us to fill us with itself. In the love of the Father and the Son, it was so. In the love of Jesus to us, it was so. In our entering into His love to abide there, it must be so; our surrender to it must have no other measure than its surrender to us. If we could grasp even a part of its knowledge, all thought of sacrifice or surrender would pass away, and our souls would be filled with wonder at the unspeakable privilege of being loved with such love, of being allowed to come and abide in it forever.

I had the chance to minister at BCC Church in Ames, IA on Super Bowl Sunday. You can listen to what I shared here.