Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

If God is love, He cannot be known apart from love.  Knowing that we are deeply loved by God should increasingly be the core of our entity.  When Carl Jung was asked if he believed in God, he reportedly said “I don’t believe in God, I know God.”   That may sound rather presumptuous but remember Jesus’s words in John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.” Therefore, to experience the love of God, we need to know God. If our experience of God is limited to our thoughts about him, we have not genuinely encountered God (Surrender to Love, David G. Benner). A.W. Tozer, a spirit-filled evangelical, stated one could have a rather continuous interchange of love with God.  He said this interaction with God results in “conscious personal awareness…. as any other fact of experience.  God’s love can be known as certainly as we know material things, through our five senses.”

Sometimes I feel like all it takes to feel God’s love is to see the thirst for Him in a child’s eyes. We support an organization in India, whose mission is “to eternally impact every unreached people group in India, through planting and strengthening the indigenous local churches.” They rescue and care for local kids from child labor abuse and children who are abandoned. The stories of some of these kids are incredibly inspiring:

Sumit is a 9-year-old boy, rescued from a Child Labor Camp. He was forced to work from early in the morning to late at night. He accepted Christ five months ago and he says because of his relationship with God he has that unspeakable joy and overwhelming peace.

Kumari Rani is a 10-year-old girl, who was found aimlessly roaming on the crowded streets at the age of four. She was determined to be a legitimate orphan since no information was found about her. She accepted Christ five years ago. She dreams of starting her own orphanage and school for girls like her.

I really think it is easy to see the Holy Spirit, described by John, as a stream of flowing water, a spring welling up inside in these children. But when it comes to ourselves we have such a hard time to believe and see that we are loved and in His hands.

Surrender to the unfailing love of God. Float in the river of this love, and trust Him to use and direct your life. As David Benner says “Trying to stay afloat and move through the water on my own energy satisfies my willful sense of independence, but it leaves me exhausted… Then in exhaustion, I momentarily surrender.  I relax.  I allow my full weight to be supported by the Spirit.  And not only do I float.  I flow with the current.  I had not even been aware that there was a current.  My thrashing about in the water made me oblivious to its presence and force “. This is the life Jesus wants for us. Floating, trusting in the current of God’s great love.