Morning
Time: 1:59 AM PST
"We love Him because He first loved us." --1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and
there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord
Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all
our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that
we love Him for no other reason than because He first loved us. Our love to Him
is the fair offspring of His love to us. Cold admiration, when studying
the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in
the heart by God's Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have
been brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled
against Him, He should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw us back.
No! never should we have had a grain of love towards God unless it had been sown
in us by the sweet seed of His love to us. Love, then, has for its parent the
love of God shed abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it
must be divinely nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which
will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to
Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but
that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As
love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot exist in
the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love must feed on love.
The very soul and life of our love to God is His love to us.
"I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give;
I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,
For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee."