Dear Ones,
   Hope you wake to the joy of a new day of grace. The question for today is: Have you ever experienced God’s love flowing through you to give to someone that you did not love in your own strength? If you have, you also know it is not your love but His! 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
   How many of us like to be stretched and taken out of our comfort zone?  Would we rather want to be comfortable and live our life as we please without a lot of effort?  But life lived with the Lord is not same old, same old but one of change and transformation as we decrease and He increases. That means often a change in how we think and how we behave and what our priorities are.
   It seems Jesus summed it up in a double commandment to love God with all our hearts souls and minds and our neighbor as ourself (Deut. 6:5) which is vertical and horizontal love. I am reading another book by Michael Casey, who writes of the importance of putting nothing before the love of Christ and loving others but we cannot do this in our own power. If you think you can, try loving an unlovable person in your own power, you will fail. I know that from experience.
   The law cannot force us to have a positive loving attitude towards someone else, but it may keep us from killing them. It cannot force us to reverence them. We can only receive freedom to love God and others by the Spirit.
   This love is a gift of God who pours His love into us and not something we can conjure up; we can only open ourselves to the receiving of His love in the core of our being. As it says in Rom 5:5, “For the love of God has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” He helps us see others through a lens of love that is past their weaknesses and failings. This only comes from Him as we draw near to Him.
   Don’t beat yourself up when you lack love for someone else who may even be close to you, but draw closer to the Lord and let Him pour his agape love into your heart. As we receive His unconditional love deep within, we desire to return that love and also to love others. Like Casey says, we learn to love by accepting love. His love is measureless and will never run out. Let us quit struggling to love in our own power, with our own puny love, and be transformed as we receive the fullness of the love He is desiring to pour into us. Then we will have to give to others out of the overflow.
  Challenge for today: Open your heart in a new way to receive His love and let Him transform you from the inside out.
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy