Tasting, experiencing and knowing the love of God transforms any life. The far reaching ramifications of understanding and living out this reality cannot possibly be explored in this tiny spot. But I found a couple of paragraphs in a book by Henri Nouwen that expressed some thoughts on this and I'm so happy to pass them on to you. I trust that they'll mean as much to you as they have to me.
...The more deeply we enter the house of God, the house whose language is prayer, the less dependent we are on the praise or blame of those who surround us, and the freer we are to let our whole being be filled with His "first love". As long as we are still wondering what other people say or think about us and trying to act in ways that will elicit a positive response, we are still victimized and imprisoned by the dark world in which we live. In that dark world we have to let our surroundings tell us what we are worth.... As long as we are in the cultches of that world, we live in darkness, since we do not know our true self. We cling to our false self in the hope that maybe more success, more praise, more satisfaction will give us the experience of being loved, which we crave. That is the fertile ground of bitterness, greed, violence and more.
In prayer, however, again and again we discover that the love we are looking for has already been given to us. ...Communing with Him, we discover "first love" (His love for us), our true self, a self not made up of the rejections and acceptances of those with whom we live, but solidly rooted in the ONE who called us into existence...our creator.
Glory to God!!! Be Blessed!!!
Mitch
