ENCOURAGED IN HEART

I believe that God is love.
I believe that because God is love, I need to love more purposefully, intentionally and powerfully.
I believe I want to love more purposefully, intentionally and powerfully.
I believe I need to learn how to love more purposefully, intentionally and powerfully.
I believe I need to practice to love more like God loves.
I believe God loves me.
I believe that it’s God’s love that compels me to want to love more expansively.
I believe that just because someone is different from me, by creed or race or gender or sexuality or opinion does not exempt or exclude me from loving them.
I believe that just the opposite is true.
I believe that if I don’t love others that are different from me, then I disprove my very first belief.

Agree or disagree, your opinion is very important to me.

What do you believe?

When we moved this past October, Cal was a focused little man. He missed our old neighborhood so much that he transported and planted a tree leaf seed from our old hood into our new front yard flower bed.

I watched as his determined little hands dug through inches of pine bark mulch and finally into the dirt. He planted, carefully covered and proudly watered the seed. Certain that in no time at all, there’d be a tree growing.

His mother was much less certain that the seed would grow and if it did, didn’t want a tree growing one foot from our new home foundation.

So while Cal was at school, I took a quick little trip to Home Depot and bought a flower in his then fav color, yellow, and planted it.

And then I waited for Cal to notice.

It took some time but he did eventually notice and remarked with an overjoyed, “LOOK, my tree is growing!”

I know that I didn’t plant a tree, but actually I didn’t even really plant a flower either.

I planted love.

Love makes people do some crazy things.

I’ve been reminded recently that what you plant, will eventually grow into something. It may not be exactly what you think it should be, but it could also be even better than you think.

There’s something about love that changes people. There’s something about God that changes people. And since God is love,

(Pic from here.)

I’m wondering if we can let God’s love change us enough to plant love in new, different and especially personal ways.

Love (God) has the power to change the world if we have the courage to plant it and watch God bloom it!

Where have you seen love planted and blooming? Wassup?

Do you have a friend that’s getting on your last nerve?

Or a family member?

How about a neighbor?

Your hubby?

Kids?

Someone at your church?

A customer service representative?

Someone at school?

Since I can check off a few of the above, it appears that it’s time, again, for me to step it up. My love walk that is…

My very first spiritual mentor, Victoria, encouraged me with this step on how to step up my love walk and I’d like to share it with you. Since 1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love…and I desperately want to be more God-like in my love walk. Victoria said to substitute my name in for “love” in the big love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 (NIV), and speak it out.

So I did it again this morning.

Steph is patient, Steph is kind. Steph does not envy, Steph does not boast, Steph is not proud. Steph is not rude, Steph is not self-seeking, Steph is not easily angered, Steph keeps no record of wrongs. Steph does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Steph always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The Holy Spirit showed me two specific people where I’ve not been patient, kind, and where I’ve been very easily angered.

Blech.

One I will share a home with for my entire life, the Finkster. If there’s one person in the entire world that I want to be found patient, kind and slow to anger…it’s my other half.

The other person, I need to deal with until our new home is finished being built. I have allowed my low tolerance for double talk, non-sense, and lack of progress/professionalism to justify my verbal butt kicking (okay, kickingS as there were three heated conversations). I highly doubt this dude knows Jesus, and the kicker is, I doubt that he’d want to know Him any better by me being in his life.

That’s not love.

The power of my love walk can make a difference, either for good or bad, and today I chose to speak it out to step it up.