For the past several months, God has been teaching me a lot about Himself and the amazing love that He has for me!  It is a very humbling thing when you begin to realize and gain understanding of this most incredible reality!  I have always known that God loves me, but in recent days it has become more than knowing.  The experience of God-loving me has become more powerful and more real than I have ever known it before.  It is absolutely awesome to be loved by Him.  I cannot even come close to coming up with adequate words to try to explain to you what I am talking about – simply amazing!

This is where I need your prayer help/support! I want to love God back!  I don’t just want to say that I love Him back.  I want to really love Him back – with the most incredible, powerful and pure love that I can come up with.  I feel so inadequate.  Pray for me – that I will totally open up my heart and life to receive all that God has for me and that I will stay open, so that His love may flow to and through my life.  It does not matter if you understand what I am talking about – just pray that I will love God back -more and better than I ever have before.

I want to love my wife and children! I love them, but they deserve so much more and I want to be the man of God that can give it to them.  Pray that I will be the loving husband that God created me to be and that I will love my wife as Jesus loved the church!  Pray that I will love my children with the “Father Love” that the Heavenly Father loves me with!

I want to love my congregation! One of the amazing things about God’s love is that even when I mess up – He still loves me.  God’s love for me is not based upon what I do or do not do!  He loves me, simply because He is love!  Pray that I will love the congregation of people who He has blessed me with the opportunity of teaching and leading with a sacrificial and restorative love!

I want to love my family and friends! God has been very good to bless me with an incredible family and some amazing friends.  I have tried to be there for them and tried to love them, but I know that I can and should do better.  Pray that God will help me to love them with a deeper, purer and more unselfish love!

I want to love strangers and enemies! I know that I honor God when I love the un-loveable, so pray that God will help me to love others as He loves me – with an unconditional and unselfish love!

Thanks for reading today and thanks for praying for me! The bottom line:  I want to be a Mark 12:30 Christian and love God with all of my heart, all of my soul and all of my mind!  I do love you and with your prayers and with God’s help – I will love God and you in an even greater way in the days ahead!