<3 Love is...Day 4

If you are just joining us, I am devoting this Valentine’s Week of love to some characteristics I read in a prayer book I go through each month called Power of a Praying Grandparent by Stormie Omartian. (Details at end of post.) 

I wore out two of her Power of a Praying Parent books when raising our three and I have many marked up and prayed over pages for the Praying Wife and Praying for your Adult Children so when I pray this new one, I just haul the whole family bus up to the throne and cover all of us along with the grandchildren, because…go big or go home. 

And that is the point of this quality we are looking at for “obvious signs of love” as she calls them. 

Generosity of heart is today’s topic and I can’t even type that phrase without imagining all the people who love with gusto and joy in my life. They love freely and over flowingly and with abundance. I picture the Ghost of Christmas Present in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. 

Giving of their hearts, giving of their time, giving of their resources…generously and liberally without holding anything back…this is the image of God’s love toward us. 

Two of my favorite passages of Scripture to really break down and mull over when I am thinking of the generosity of God’s heart are: 

The thief does not come except to steal, and kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. John 10:20 NKJV

and 

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…Ephesians 3:20 NKJV

I have heard Priscilla Shirer speak on this and she points out that what we could think to ask for would be enough. 

Receiving more would be a lot. 

Receiving abundantly more…is just like going way out beyond the more than we already thought we wanted…

and He doesn’t stop there. 

He goes on and adds a “far more”…an “exceedingly” is put before the abundantly and the more. 

So using the definitions…because you know I do love definitions…

He measures things out in ….

an extra amount of an ample quantity to an exceptional degree. 

My brain hurts. 

The point is, as Oswald Chambers likes to remind me a couple times a month…I have been so graciously and lavishly loved by my Father that I now can daily pour out generously on those around me because He has given me more than-more than, excessively and in great measure and then more spilled on top of that beyond all I could possibly hope for or imagine in my wildest dreams.

And for all who have the power of Christ IN us…we can all do that.

So go out there and be generous with acts of love. 

We can afford it <3

………………………

“Give them obvious signs of love — such as mercy, forgiveness, patience, generosity of heart, acceptance, and encouragement…” page 36; Stormie Omartian, Power of a Praying Grandparent. Harvest House Publishers, 2016.