The Value of Process

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Process is essential to our growth and maturity in life. It is process that brings out the true potential and value of a person or thing. Diamonds are a much-celebrated gem around the world. A pound of coal and an ounce of diamond may have similar carbon molecular make-up but they immensely differ in value.  Diamonds are extremely valuable because of the process it takes to form it which includes intense heat and pressure. Furthermore, it takes the skillful hands of a master artisan to turn it into a priceless jewel.

The Word of God says that God is the Potter and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). He is forming us into unique vessels for His glory and purpose. How we respond to His dealings and seasons determine the kind of attitude, mentality, leadership. It also determines the measure of our influence, authority and the power that we are able to carry. Nobody is exempt from this. We will all go through the process of growth.

I had the privilege of visiting giant sequoia trees in the US. These trees are said to be death-defying as they can grow to up to 3,000 years old. The General Sherman, one of these giant sequoias, is said to be the largest living organism by volume today.  It stands at 275 feet, the base at 100 feet wide and weighs a staggering 2.7 million pounds.  One of the abilities of the sequoia is that they can withstand fire. It has been said that fire affects sequoias at every stage in life. The mineral soil, which sequoias need for germination, should be bare, meaning they are free from forest litter like dried leaves, twigs, bark and needles, which the fire burns, as well as the undergrowth and other trees that will compete for the ample sunlight sequoias need.  The sequoia bark which can grow up to three feet thick protects the tree from significant damage.  And should the fire penetrate against the thick bark, a new growth of about half an inch thick of new wood and bark can heal the scar.  This scar in fact gives beauty to the tree’s annual ring pattern. Fire brings out the best in sequoia trees – ability to heal, accelerated growth, and grandeur.

This is an apt picture of our journey with God.  When we allow God to deal with us, even through or with fire, and when we respond in total obedience and trust, we become like the sequoias – we can stand strong, withstand the adversity or trial, and give glory to our Maker.

Jesus went through the process of growth. In Hebrews 5:8-9 it says, “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience through the things He suffered. And having been perfected,  He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey.” His sonship did not exempt Him from the process. The prophet Isaiah declared a prophetic description on the nature and the ministry of the coming Messiah. This is an accurate picture of Jesus and the process of growth He went through towards the fullness of His Kingdom Assignment.  Let us  take a look at this prophetic profile:

‘For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government (the Kingdom) shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace.  And of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward and forever. The zeal of the LORD of host will perform this.’ Isaiah 9:6-7

There are several important details to this prophecy:

A child is born. Jesus was born in a manger as a babe. This is our entry point as well. And as children, we lack maturity and wisdom, and without maturity we cannot fully access our inheritance and step into our glory as sons of God. The child needs to be trained in the ways of the Father before he can be entrusted with authority, power, influence and the fullness of his inheritance (Galatians 4:1-2).

A son is given. During His baptism at the River Jordan Jesus was launched, affirmed and blessed by the Father as He declared, “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased”. This moment came in the fullness of time. From the time Jesus was a young boy in the temple talking to the teachers, saying “…I must be about My Father’s business” (Luke 2:49) to this exact moment He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 5:52).   It takes a process to progress from a child into becoming a matured son.

The Father commissioned Jesus into His divine assignment as a matured Son, not when he was still a baby on a manger. Jesus revealed the nature, the intent and the purposes of the Father. And as Jesus is, so are we in this world. There is an appointed time that the Father launches us in our kingdom assignment. We advance in our kingdom assignment to the degree that we bear and reveal these facets of Jesus, the matured son. Sons best RE-PRESENT the Father to the world.

The process of learning our identity is best done with others and with the help of those who have walked this road. Consider joining us in the Blueprint for Kingdom Identity. Click here to access more information on our Identity journey!

Destined for the Throne

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Have you ever felt like you’re called to greatness, yet somehow you’re stuck in the day-to-day, mundane things? There is a process God takes His beloved children through to prepare us for our divine destiny, we call this training-for-reigning.

“Bethlehem” is the place where we learn to be faithful in the natural. Although we may not see a lot going on externally, God is cultivating His presence and history with us during this significant process. When we are faithful in the small things, we can be trusted with blessing and increase. 

The way to greatness is by doing small things with a great heart.

As Psalm 78: 70-72 describes, “He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens, from tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.

What areas of your life do you need God to restore purity and childlikeness? We choose to be discipled by Jesus not pain, or trauma.

 

Click here to learn more about Blueprint for Kingdom Destiny Masterclass.

Receiving Radical Love

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There is a lie Adam and Eve bought into in the garden.

They were told they needed to do something to get something so they could be someone. They forgot that they already were someone, had already been given everything, and did not have to do anything to please their Father.

Once we have stepped out of the environment of Papa God’s love, our craving to get back into it drives us toward one of two things: (1) distorted desires and pleasures that blind us to God or (2) performance and works in an effort to please Him.

One way or another, we’re trying to get attention, soothe our pain, and fill up on whatever is missing in our hearts. We strive for the love we were created for because we forget how loved we already are.

The reality is that we do not actually need to do anything to get something and be somebody. God has already done everything and given everything because we already are somebodies in His eyes. The seeds of the enemy that were sown into human hearts long ago in Eden have blinded us to that truth.

The Broken Image

“Has God really said?” (Genesis 3:1 NASB). That is how the enemy sowed these seeds into the heart of mankind. When our first parents listened to that question, it became the seed that grew into dense forests of deception in our lives.

This is where our separation from God began—not separation from His love, but separation from being able to receive it and experience it the way He wanted us to.

Guilt, shame, broken identity, broken relationships, and all the other disappointments and diseases of a fallen life entered in. We lost the ability in our natural selves to receive and give divine love and express it to one another.

Adam and Eve listened to the wrong voice, and self rather than Papa God became the center of every human being’s life.

We still have many problems with that. We have inner voices of condemnation and shame that are not holy. They might sound humble, but they contradict what God has said about us in Jesus.

They are the voices of the accuser turning us inward, keeping us focused on ourselves. And those voices can be loud and relentless.

What happens when self is at the center of our lives? Love becomes transactional rather than relational. We do things in order to get it. We have to perform well for it—to behave ourselves, live up to a high standard, or whatever our instincts tell us we have to do in order to deserve it. And since we can never do enough to deserve the perfect love of the heavenly family—it is never about “deserving” anyway—we are always striving and never arriving.

I call this a “love vacuum”—an empty heart that is desperate to be filled with the Father’s love. Every human being since the fall starts out with one. We live from a love deficit.

In itself, this is a tragic situation. But it has even more tragic consequences because whenever love is absent, fear flourishes.

I think you are probably familiar with the fruits of fear. When we are afraid, we compensate by trying to fend for ourselves, control our lives, become self-protective, and create boundaries and distance between us and other people.

Deep inside of every independent, isolated, overassertive, manipulative person is a heart that is deeply ashamed, starving for affirmation, and very afraid.

Over time, these seeds of our Father hunger grow. They cause insecurity, low self-esteem, self-hatred, violence, paranoia, anger, suicidal thoughts, promiscuity, rebellion, confusion, restlessness, depression, addictions, compulsive behavior, mental problems, and so much more. People spend years in counseling for these kinds of things, never realizing the root behind them.

We need the love of the Father.

If we are unaware of His love—or even if we are aware but not fully convinced of it—we live like orphans.

The Orphan Heart

I once spoke to a group of psychiatrists. Some of them were professors at top universities. I explained this root of our insecurities. I told them that everyone, no matter what their exterior looks like, knows the feeling of failure. No matter how hard they try, no one ever feels like they measure up.

Several of these psychiatrists began to weep. Many of them recognized these symptoms in their hardest, most hopeless cases. Some of them recognized them in themselves. Our Father hunger is universal. We were all created to know the love of the perfect family.

Our human instincts and ingrained assumptions go to war against our desire to fully accept the Father’s love. That is not the way we were designed; these instincts and assumptions were not given by God and came only after the fall. But basically we have been conditioned to assume that when we’ve fallen short— sinned, failed, not measured up—God withholds a little bit of love from us, and only when we are doing everything well in our relationships, personal habits, and attitudes can we be fully at rest in His love.

The problem with that idea should be obvious. It means we are never quite measuring up. So we can never be at rest.

But if Papa God’s love is that highest form of agape, then it is not dependent on our behavior or attitudes at all. He might care about those things, but He will never measure His love by them.

His love is completely independent, based entirely on His character and nature, and therefore unchanging, constant, full, deep, and permanent.

But we still have a lot of trouble accepting that.

Maybe you are thinking that your inability to measure up means that Papa God is not completely delighted in you all the time—that even though He loves you, maybe you’re a problem child, and He only loves you because He has to. It’s His job description, kind of like a parent or grandparent has to accept you as part of the family even if they are upset with you. When we see God through the assumption that His love is an obligation, we can never really understand the pleasure He gets from loving us.

We need supernatural help to comprehend this. We need revelations and encounters and mountaintop moments when the Holy Spirit deposits this new paradigm deep into our hearts. It really is radical, even though it has been there from the very beginning. And it takes some radical heart surgery for us to accept it.

A Tsunami Wave of Love

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Through your natural eyes, you may have looked at some people on the news or in your circle of acquaintances as “unreachable”—as very difficult cases that make hope seem unrealistic.

In your theology, you probably know God can change any life. But these lives? Many of them look too far gone.

A woman came up to me after a conference session recently to tell me her story. She had been abused from the age of one onward. When she was twelve, she was trafficked by a satanic cult and horrifically abused over the next few years. She had lost eleven babies, some of them used as human sacrifices by the people exploiting her. She had struggled with mental illness, been on many medications, and gone through years of therapy.

As I listened to her story, I began to feel totally wrecked by the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual torment she had experienced. I could not imagine going through everything she had suffered. It was just horrible.

I am not sure how she came to be at our meeting, but I remember that when I was preaching that day, I suddenly stopped in the middle of my message and told a story about how God had taken me back to a time when I was twelve years old and healed some deep childhood wounds with His love. I felt a little like I had done some rabbit chasing—that I’d gotten off track and interrupted my own message with a story that did not quite fit—but when this woman heard that story, she thought, Maybe love can take me back too. Maybe there was a time in my life before pain. She was probably in her forties now and had been tormented as long as she could remember. But maybe, she thought, God could take her back to a time before the darkness.

Suddenly, this woman felt as if she was being taken out of her own body. God took her back to a time as a little baby before the pain and began ministering to her there. She saw how He had seen her, accepted her, and adored her before she was in her mother’s womb. She saw who she was intended to be in His eyes. He began healing those deep, deep wounds.

As she was telling me this story, I could see her face change at this moment. I could see her countenance shift from darkness to light. Tears began to flow. She was glowing as she described how God had touched her.

“I knew I was changed,” she said. She hugged me and told me it was the first time in her life she had experienced love, felt valued, and had hope. Love had set her completely free.

At many points in her life, people could have looked at this precious woman and thought her situation was too difficult, she was too far gone, one of those hard cases, unreachable.

But God’s love reached her. There are no hard cases for God.

Love heals, restores, and makes all things new.

People we normally see as difficult cases are usually extremely broken hearts looking for wholeness. It does not matter if those hearts are inside a wounded and abused exterior, a terrorist, a crime boss, a homeless person on the side of the road, or a very religious Pharisee.

Everybody is searching for love. The hard cases often run from love or resist it because they have spent long years, even a lifetime, looking at evidence that authentic, supernatural love does not exist.

But their hearts know it does. Their hearts may be bound in extreme pain or bitterness, but they still know.

And one touch—or sometimes many repeated touches—from an ambassador of love carrying the authority of Heaven can break down walls, melt bitterness, and transform a life.

But an ambassador of love first needs to encounter that powerful love personally. And then we need to overcome any fear that stands in the way of expressing it.

Love in the Valley of Bones

Ezekiel lived among the Jewish exiles in Babylon. In a vision, God took him to a valley of dry bones. In other words, he was standing among very dead people—a place where revival looked impossible. A hopeless situation.

But God breathed hope into this situation by telling Ezekiel to prophesy life. That is what he did, and the bones began to move. Broken bones rejoined. Flesh grew. Dry bones turned into whole bodies.

But these bodies were still dead. So God told the prophet to prophesy again. He did, and God breathed life into these bodies, and they stood up—an “exceedingly great army” (Ezekiel 37:1–10). A generation of the dead came fully alive, ready to return to Israel.

This prophetic picture prepared captive Jews to hope and believe for a return to their homeland. It was given to Ezekiel at a low point in Hebrew history, when God’s very own chosen people were taken into exile and their holy city was destroyed. In His tender and compassionate love, Papa God wanted them to know that a time of restoration would come.

This prophecy demonstrates that the Babylonian captivity was not a hopeless situation. But the prophecy does even more than that. It also demonstrates that no situation anywhere is hopeless.

No generation is beyond revival. No darkness is immune to light.

No degree of death can overcome real life.

In your mission as an ambassador of love, you will find yourself walking among the remnants of brokenness. And it will be important for you to walk through them without fear, or at least without letting fear overcome you. You will need to replace your fear with love and hope. The heavenly environment within you will need to be stronger than the earthly environment around you. Your love will need to be greater than your fear—or your discouragement or your concerns or your questions.

You will come to valleys full of dry bones. There is no way to avoid that. When Jesus talks about fields being ripe for the harvest, this is what He has in mind. This is where your harvest field is.

Maybe you were looking for the easiest and best harvest fields. But that is probably not where the Holy Spirit will take you.

It is not a very good idea to ask for the best harvest fields, not how natural minds define “best” anyway. From the Father’s perspective, the best harvest fields are the most desperate. He wants His ambassadors of love to prophesy the breath of hope and love into hopeless and loveless places. These valleys are where the greatest harvest is.

The reason for this is simple. Dark places do not have a darkness problem; they have a light problem. Hate-filled hearts do not have a hate problem; they have a love problem. Deadened hearts do not have a death problem; they have a life problem. Do you see where this is going?

God wants to use you—to put His words on your lips to prophesy His purposes. As you prophesy His words, the Holy Spirit—the breath of God, the wind—will release love and life. And He will do this in the places you might think are the most unlikely. After all, a valley of dry, lifeless bones seems to be a pretty unlikely center of revival. Deserts are unlikely places for tsunami waves of love. But these are exactly the places that need revivals and love.

Wrestling With Love

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Imagine being so hungry for significance that you trick your father into giving you your twin brother’s inheritance. Okay, now imagine living in anxiety for your safety and the safety of your family for years and years of your precious life, which is a blip in the light of eternity. 

If you’re familiar with Jacob’s story, you will remember that he has a track record of trickery and manipulation. This may seem extreme but he’s not very unlike us in his core desires and fears. He did what he needed to, to get what he wanted. Most of us have experienced pressures of life and sometimes when we are squeezed, what comes out of us doesn’t always look like love. 

He wanted what he thought he deserved and he knew how to get it. His soul was not at rest. 

You may also remember him as the man who wrestled with God and prevailed. He walked away with a limp and we call that winning. But, that’s not the only reason why. Jacob got into a tussle with God and left changed. After all of his pursuits and deception in life, He ended up face to face with the only one who wouldn’t be a victim to his endeavors but would change him and his family for generations. 

Jacob had an encounter with love. 

Love always reveals your true character and destiny despite your past faults. Papa God sees you through the lens of love. Our names reveal our character and Jacob’s name was to follow at the heel, supplant, pursue and chase down. This was his identity up until this point; his life’s work. In one moment the past was no more as Papa declared “Israel” – one who wrestles with God. God had given him a new identity. No longer would he be known as the heel grabber but by the fact that God had gotten ahold of him. 

You see, after this, the way he would maneuver through life would change physically and in his heart posture as well. When Esau and Jacob met again after 14 years, Jacob wasn’t running from him. He wasn’t trying to trick him. They weren’t going to have another falling out or showdown. No. There was an embrace. The healing had come. Jacob faced God, and himself, then he got to face his brother, with no fear. He had heaven’s eyes.

He was awakened to love. 

Is there an area in your life where you need to stop running after what this life has to offer? What Papa God has is an invitation to be transformed by His presence. 

My new book The Love Awakening is available now! Sign up today to receive a sneak peek of the first three chapters, click here >>> https://www.leifhetland.com/resources/the-love-awakening/

How Do We Recognize Love?

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I’ve always been fascinated by the story of the Samaritan woman who met Jesus by the well. The time and distance that lie between us and the stories found in scripture can sometimes dull their impact. Jesus had been ministering all day and was on his way back to Galilee from Judea. He took the route through Samaria. This already was unusual, as many devout Jews would take the longer route around Samaria just to avoid running into any Samaritans. The history between Jews and Samaritans carried both religious and racial weight. Mutual animosity was deeply seeded in both cultures. Perhaps this is why Jesus used them as examples so often. The differences between men and women were much more pronounced during this period of history. It would have been considered inappropriate for a man to speak to a woman he did not know while she was working at the well.

 It was unheard of for a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan woman. Despite all these cultural boundaries. Despite all the potential for offense or misunderstanding. The woman recognized Jesus for who he was. She not only opened the door for a personal encounter with Jesus, but she also opened the door for her entire town. Later in the story, we see that many Samaritans ended up having an encounter with their savior, all because this one woman chose to believe.

I’m fascinated by this story because it reminds me of how delicate encountering Jesus can be. It wouldn’t have taken much for this story to have gone completely different. What if the woman had been too embarrassed by Jesus’ questions? What if she had seen a Jewish man sitting next to the well and decided that she would just come back later? What if she had let her social prejudices, or the prejudices she would have expected Him to have, prevent her from hearing the truth behind Jesus’ words? It seems to me that her need to know Jesus was greater than her fear of social norms.

The Pharisees were put to the same test, time and time again. Christians like to poke fun at the Pharisees, and I understand why. It is easy to see how foolish they were to miss that their Messiah had come. However, I sometimes think that the story of the Pharisees is one of the most tragic in the Bible. They had their Messiah. The one they had dedicated their lives to studying. They knew all the prophecies that foretold his coming. They likely knew everyone by heart. Yet they missed the Messiah even as He stood in front of them. It can be easy to poke fun at them, but I would rather learn from them.

It can be frightening, to see how easily and consistently the people that dedicated their lives to studying the Messiah missed Him when he came. If these master scholars were able to make such a huge mistake, then what hope does the average Christian have? Thankfully, we have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. We can learn to avoid the traps that ensnared the Pharisees. I believe that there are three simple keys that can help posture our hearts to recognize and receive His love when it comes. 

 

Be expectant, but don’t have expectations. God’s ways are mysterious. Sometimes my best times with Him are when I spend hours in my room worshiping, praying, and diving into the word. Sometimes my best times with Him happen during the ten minutes it takes to get to my office. Sometimes the best thing I hear from Him is a single word. Sometimes it is a rich and detailed vision. God likes variety and values unique expressions of His love. If we expect Him to only show up in certain ways and at certain times, then we are likely to miss out when He shows up in a new way. Expect Him to speak to you, but don’t be surprised when it comes in an unexpected way. 

Look for the fruit first. It can be disconcerting when God comes in a way that we have not experienced before. There have been great debates within Christianity over whether speaking in tongues, being “slain in the spirit,” “holy laughter,” spiritual gifts, and other such manifestations are legitimate expressions of God’s presence. Many of these debates have led to bitter arguments, church splits, or even the formation of new denominations. While I do think it is important to test all manifestations, I believe that we should test their fruit first.

If a gift or manifestation releases love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control then I am much more likely to trust it. I believe that testing everything by the letter of the law is what caused the Pharisees to mistrust and eventually betray Jesus. They rejected Him because He did not fit their exact interpretation of the Messiah. I think we do better when we keep our tests simple. Look for the fruit of the Spirit first. 

Get to know God’s heart, then get to know His ways. First, we need to experience God, only then can we understand Him. Our God is living and relational. He is interested in a personal relationship with us, not a professional relationship. The only way we can understand what He does is to become familiar with His heart. To do this we must also be more interested in a personal relationship than a professional one. We must seek to understand who He is, not just what He can do for us.

The Pharisees made it their priority to analyze every detail of the law. They strove to bring clarity and specificity to every letter of the law. It is my opinion that this focus was the beginning of their downfall. When we forget the central purpose that lies behind everything that God does, when we forget that God is love, it becomes easy to miss the message behind the letter of the law. We fail to see the forest through the trees. If we understand the heart of God, that everything He does is in service of love, then we can see how His word and His actions are all expressions of that same love. Otherwise, we are likely to make the same mistake as the Pharisees and sabotage the savior we sought to serve. 

What do you expect God’s love to look like as it begins to transform your life, how will it come? Are there any prejudices, hurts, or lies in your life that might limit your ability to experience God’s love? What would it look like if those were completely removed?

 

My new book The Love Awakening is available now! Sign up today to receive a sneak peek of the first three chapters, click here >>> https://www.leifhetland.com/resources/the-love-awakening/



A Lasting Transformation

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God is always looking for ways to reveal His love to us. Every time we see it, there is an opportunity to be transformed by it. He revealed the key in scripture that had been on my heart for years. I did not learn it through knowledge or by decoding a mystery. I learned it by experiencing a miracle. The transformation that comes from encountering God’s love is always permanent. His love is not fleeting. It is not temporary. He gives it and does not take it away. He gives and keeps on giving. Every scripture, every miracle, and every divine coincidence is a touch from heaven, reminding us of the love that He has given.

Since God’s love is steadfast and permanent, the enemy attacks us in other ways. He seeks to make our sensitivity to God’s love grow dull. If we want to make the transformation of love last in our lives then we must continually tune our hearts to Papa God’s. To do this we must learn to respond to His every touch, listen to every word, and see every move of his presence. The same principle applies to marriage. If we, as married people, do not protect our love, it will grow stale. We can’t afford to let “I love you,” become nothing more than a casual phrase we say on our way out the door like “See you later,” or “Have a nice day.” We must work to keep our love sharp, to keep it alive so that its meaning does not become dull. How do you keep love fresh in a marriage? You buy each other gifts from time to time, write love notes, try new things together, share kind words, learn about each other’s interests, and go on dates. Keeping our love fresh with God is not all that different.

Here are a few practical ways to help perpetuate the transformation of love that God is releasing in your life. 

Pursue Prophecy. We are meant to eagerly desire the gift of prophecy. Both the receiving and giving of it. They are the kind words of a loving father. A personal declaration of affection and encouragement. 1 Corinthians 14:1 says:

Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy. 

Each prophetic word you receive is not only a word for you, not just a piece of information but a window into how God thinks of you. It is a love note from Him. Furthermore, every prophetic you give is not only a word for that person but a window into how God thinks about His people. Having a constant inflow and outflow of prophetic declaration gives us a regularly refreshed view of His heart. 

Read The Word With Him. The Bible is God’s sovereign word; a divine tapestry illustrating his pursuit of mankind, woven over thousands of years. The best part is that you get enough to read through every piece of that masterwork sitting with the one who inspired it. You get to ask Him questions, get His opinion on specific events, and feel what He felt as those things were happening. It should be obvious, that God was present at every event recorded in the Bible. He was there watching, working, guiding His children, and releasing His love just as He is today. Imagine all the wonderful things He has to tell you about the history of His love. And ask Him questions. The Holy Spirit is with us to introduce answers and new mysteries through His word. It is a divine scavenger hunt for God’s glory.\

Go On Walks With Him. This may seem overly simple and practical, but I find a certain romantic charm in the idea of walking with God in the cool of the day as Adam and Eve did. Jesus has paid the price for our journey back to the Father’s heart. Nothing is holding us back from Him. If we can boldly come to the throne of grace, then surely we can go on a walk with Him. Besides, a walk gives your body just enough to do to keep it from being distracted. Not to mention it’s good exercise. 

Tuning our hearts to God is a daily process. Just like our bodies need food and rest, our spirit needs to be reconnected with our creator. Take time today to connect with Him. Tell Him what you love about His creation. Lay your burdens at His feet. What do you think your day-to-day would look like if you lived every moment connected to His heart?

My new book, The Love Awakening, will be released on April 19th. Sign up today to receive a sneak peek of the first three chapters and other bonuses, click here >>> https://www.leifhetland.com/resources/the-love-awakening/

Created in Love

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What is the most breathtaking sight you’ve ever seen? 

Maybe you love the mountains-how they reach into the clouds and tower of beautiful river valleys below. Maybe you’re a beach-you can’t resist a colorful sunset over a peaceful sea. Perhaps you’re captivated by the mystery of life seeing a newborn baby gaze into its mother’s and father’s eyes for the first time. Whatever your favorite scenes are, you know how beauty can overwhelm you. You know what it’s like to see something amazingly beautiful and let your heart be captured by it. Whatever the picture for you, there is love behind it. Creation is a reflection of God’s glory and an expression of His love. Eden was the canvas of God’s love, and God did more than paint beautiful scenes there. 

This is where He could reproduce the kind of relationship that characterized the heavenly family, where sons and daughters could live out their calling as images of His nature. He created human beings to look like Him, to live like Him, and to love like Him. In this landscape of love, the relationships of the first family were meant to reflect divine values, their work was meant to further Papa God’s purposes, and their hearts were meant to align with each other’s hearts. We know this is not how it turned out. 

If we were able to peek into Heaven before time, I think we would see one particular created being who didn’t “get” what love was all about. He did not love himself the way the Father loved him. He broke the covenant and violated the family culture. He went his own way. Everything that is broken came from a created being who lost sight of perfect love-who did not know how to be loved, and therefore did not know how to love, and therefore left the warmth of the Father’s living room and tried to build his own kingdom. 

Everything wrong in this world happened because someone opted out of love. And then he tricked the first human beings into opting out of love too. This is where rebellion entered into creation. So, in light of all this, who are you? What was your original design?  The real you, the original you, was in the heart of Papa God before time. He already had a plan for forgiveness, redeeming, and restoring every one of His people. Amazingly, none of our sins, mistakes, flaws, failures, offenses, fears, and insecurities-no other sources of guilt and shame, no matter how long they have weighed on you-define your story. From God’s perspective, they are intrusions on your journey. In God’s mind, His idea of who you are fit within His idea of the perfect environment of the garden and everything else He created in love.  

This is why we need restoration. We need to be restored back into the image God envisioned for us before time began. This means that not only does our journey begin in the heart of the Father before the foundation of the world, but it also ends there too. From start to finish, the love of God sees who we are and is constantly leading us into our true selves. His love is always there, never changing, never wavering, measureless and timeless, always sustaining, always pursuing. 

 

My new book, The Love Awakening, will be released on April 19th. Sign up today to receive a sneak peek of the first three chapters and other bonuses, click here >>> https://www.leifhetland.com/resources/the-love-awakening/