Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, 

“. . . Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world — wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important — has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out— but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” 1 John 3:15-17 The Message Bible (MSG)

 None desires the best for man(i.e., male, female) nor loves man more than GOD. When I think on the unselfish, eternal-life-giving gift of God the Father through Jesus the Anointed One, I am overwhelmed by the immensity of God’s kind of love (divine love) for you and I (Ephesians 2:4-9). Oftentimes I immediately equate being overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude. Yet it is much more than gratitude for the grace or mercy or favor of the Sovereign Lord God Almighty. Through revelation (which moves beyond information in the WORD) by the teachings of the Holy Spirit, we may come to know God who first loved us (1 John 4:19) and the characteristics of God who is Love. The world knows love as an emotion but Love is God (1 John 4:8b,16b). Through Christ Jesus we may have personal experience and personal fellowship with God the Father (John 6:44, 14:6; Colossians 1:13). The more we come to know God the Father who so loved us that He sent His only begotten Son so that we might be reconciled unto Him as sons & daughters (1 John 4:10, Romans 8:14-16, John 3:16); and the more we come to know JESUS who agreed to leave the presence of Him (Whom He had always been in the immediate presence of) to dwell among us; and the more we come to know that JESUS’s walk in perfect obedience to the will of God the Father (even in the midst of those who outwardly despised Him) was solely for our benefit; and the more we come to fully comprehend the sacrifice of His blood for nothing He had done (2 Corinthians 5:21); is the more a deep and abiding love for Him steadily increases. This comprehensive understanding of Jesus’s love for us is that for which I personalize when praying the Holy Spirit given prayer of which the Apostle Paul writes to the church at Ephesus: “16 Abba Father, in Jesus’ name, I pray that out of all Your glorious riches, You may strengthen me with power by Your Spirit in my inner being 17 so that Christ Jesus lives in my heart by faith. And I pray that being rooted and established in love, 18 I may have power together with all the saints to grasp what is the length and the breadth and the depth and the height of the love of Jesus, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled with all the fullness of You.” (At this point, I usually pray Philippians 1:9-11 before ending with the remaining two personalized verses.) “ 20  Now unto You Father, who is able to do immeasurably more than all I can ever ask or imagine, according to Your power at work in me, 21 to You be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever and ever, Amen” Ephesians 3:16-21 (NIV, AMP).  

Speak the promise . . . Harriet