Examine your heart

Todays blog post was contributed by Denise Friedman:

Yesterday we spent time reflecting on the depth of God’s love we have experienced.  Hopefully you were able to spend some time honestly considering this and inviting God to move within you as never before. Remember, agape love, which the Bible speaks of, cannot be learned in an intellectual way, but must be experienced.

We need to prepare ourselves to receive more of God’s love.  How do we do this?  When we look to scripture for our answer, we find we need to enlarge the capacity of our heart.  This means, removing love of worldy things. 

¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father^[a] is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.-1 John 2:15-16

Today let’s identify what is wrong within our hearts.  The scripture gives us some starting points: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life.  Well, that gets right to the point.  You mean if I have lust or pride, I can’t experience agape love?  That is exactly what scripture tells us.  Today, spend some time honestly identifying the wrong things that fill your heart, things that are of the world, not of our Father.  Don’t worry, he won’t be surprised with whatever you bring to him, he already knows everything in our hearts and loves us just the same.