As I journey through the Lent Season for 2018, I am amazed to discover more and more about my Heavenly Father.  The depths of His love that surround me.

As I look back over my life, I realize how important it is to stay in life-union with Him.

I buried my mom last week.

This week, I sit in an ICU room with a grandson, Patrick.  As I sat a little while with him yesterday, I remembered my journey with him.  I was there the day he was born.

Just like his Heavenly Father, I know who my grandson is – first and foremost, he is a child of God.  He has a warm and loving heart.  Considered sensitive – just like me!  And I am good with that.

We leave him in the hands of the one who created Him.  Who knows Patrick better than any one of us.  Anticipating updates like a deer who pants for streams of water.

Where do I go but to the Lord?

In our Scripture today, we see some words repeated – love is a big one – loving one another is so important.  It is with the Love of God that we must love one another with in order to be successful in our journey.  Let’s take a look:

“I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me. You must continually let my love nourish your hearts. If you keep my commands, you will live in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands, for I continually live nourished and empowered by his love. My purpose for telling you these things is so that the joy that I experience will fill your hearts with overflowing gladness! “So this is my command: Love each other deeply, as much as I have loved you.” – John 15:9-12 (TPT)

Get this one.  Jesus loves each one of us with the same love that the Father loves him with.  This is not like the word “love” that we hear people throw around today – that is not deep.  This is a love that is so deep it is connected to Jesus and to the Father.

His love nourishes.  This is soul food.  His love.

Purpose.  Note his purpose in speaking these words: So that the JOY he experiences will fill our hearts with overflowing gladness.

And once again, we are commanded to love one another as he loves us.

At times in our lives, we live life as if we come from different trees.  But that doesn’t work.  We are branches – He is the vine – it is not many trees.

IF we don’t love one another it means that our fellowship with the vine has been cut off.  There is no fruit-bearing in those moments.

I pray that these words go deeply into your hearts today.  Know that Jesus loves you.  The Father loves you.  It is love n’ joy perfected.

In difficult moments, where could I go but to the Lord?  That is the song that I leave for you today.

Where Could I Go?