Hello, friends!

I've been on kind of a Internet Sabbatical for Lent,
but now I'm back! I pray all is well with you, and
that God is strengthening you in your recovery.

While I was gone, I gave a talk on being God's
beloved, and I wanted to share parts of it with you.
It's kind of long, but I really pray it blesses you,
and I pray even more that the lies of the enemy
wouldn't hide its truth from you.

:) BK

Today, I'm going to be talking about How God feels
about His children. 1 John 3:1 says "How great is the
love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God! And that is what we are!"

To begin, I’m going to talk about John, the apostle &
disciple. John was one of the 3 disciples closest to
Jesus, but he didn't begin writing about his
experiences with God until very late in his life.
Therefore, the Gospel of John was written with
perspective. He had had over 50 years of reflecting
on Jesus, His time on earth, and what the Christian
walk was about. I believe it was because of this
perspective that in his gospel, John referred to
himself as "The Disciple who Jesus Loved".

John was intimately familiar with the special place
that Jesus had in His heart for all of his disciples.
John was the disciple who had literally rested his
head against God’s heart at the Last Supper when he
leaned on Jesus's chest. Thus, John did not define
himself solely as a disciple, or an apostle, an
evangelist, or author of 5 books in the Bible - he
didn't even call Himself by name (a very important
thing during that time), but instead based his entire
identity on the fact that he was loved by God.

That's the core of what I'm saying today - our
position is like John if we are followers of Jesus,
that is that we are the beloved of God. And how if we
lived out of that truth, our lives would be changed.

What does it mean to be God's Beloved?
The Greek word that is primarily translated "beloved"
in the NT also means "esteemed, very dear, favorite,
worthy of love". Jesus was the original "Beloved"
child of God. When Jesus was baptized, God said to
him "You are My beloved Son, in You I am
well-pleased." Through Jesus, if we are followers of
Him, we are also God’s beloved children. Many of the
New Testament authors remind us frequently in their
letters that we are God’s beloved, and John was no
exception. In fact, John liked the word so much that
he used in 4 times in his last epistle, a letter that
was only 15 verses long. John wanted to make sure we
didn't forget our position as the "beloved children of
God".

Brennan Manning in his book, "Abba's Child" says,
"Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our
existence." Being "beloved" means we are Fully
accepted, fully worthy to be loved by God, we are very
dear to Him, that we are in fact His favorites. That
nothing we could do could make God love us any more,
and nothing we could do could make God love us any
less. It means that like John said, we are the One
who Jesus loves. Some might look at this and think,
John is very prideful calling himself "the one" who
Jesus loved, but I look at it this way: We are all,
as followers of Jesus, "the one" who Jesus loved - if
we were the only person on earth, God still would have
given His only son to die for us, because we are the
one He loves.

Brennan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest who
was on a walking tour of a rural parish, when he saw
an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road,
praying. Impressed, the priest said to the man, "You
must be very close to God." The peasant looked up
from his prayers, thought for a moment, and then
smiled, saying, "Yes, He's very fond of me." Being
the Beloved of God means God's very fond of us, that
He not only loves us, but He actually really likes us.
Do you ever feel like God is just putting up with you
because He has to? Or Do you honestly believe that
God likes you, not just loves you because
theologically God has to love you?

God says through Isaiah "Do not fear, for I have
redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!
You are precious in My sight............you are
honored and I love you........For the mountains may be
removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness
will not be removed from you' Says the LORD who has
compassion on you."

The Hebrew word translated as "to have compassion" can
also be translated "to have tender affection". I
challenge you to read through the OT and replace the
word "compassion" with "tender affections". Do you
believe that God could have tender feelings for you?

Author Richard Foster says this about God: "His heart
is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes
unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A
cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes
of God. Like a proud mother who is thrilled to
receive a bouquet of wilted dandelions from her child,
so God celebrates our feeble expressions of
gratitude."

How does this knowledge change us?
Brennan Manning tells the story of a man who was on a
silent, guided retreat when his spiritual director
told his student this about the Christian walk: "the
heart of it is this: to make the Lord and His immense
love for you constitutive of your personal worth.
Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.
God's love for you and His choice of you constitute
your worth. Accept that, and let it become the most
important thing in your life."

Writing to a NY intellectual and close friend, Henri
Nouwen stated, "All I want to say to you is, 'You are
the Beloved' and all I hope is that you can hear these
words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and
force that love can hold. My only desire is to make
these words reverberate in every corner of your being
- 'You are the Beloved'."

How did this change John? Love is the central theme
in much of John’s writings. The word love appears 75
times in all 4 Gospels combined, but 39 of those times
(over half) are in John. The word love appears 26
times in 1st John, more than any other letter in the
New Testament, including books that are 3 times as
long.

How has this knowledge changed me?
I've always struggled with feelings of worthlessness,
uselessness and stupidity. It has been worse in the
past year. I don't know if that's because I've begun
to do something that doesn't have a rule book, a
step-by-step guide dictating "this is how you do it".
I don't know if it's because I'm putting myself out
there, making myself more vulnerable. But I do know
how it manifests itself - in negative self-talk and
paralyzing feelings of inadequacy. I used to walk
around thinking "Jesus loves even me." Now instead, I
tell myself "Jesus loves especially me." The
knowledge of that I am Beloved changes how I treat
myself, and in turn, changes the way I view others. I
believe when Jesus said "Love your neighbor as
yourself" He not only meant don't put others below
yourself but He also meant was we can only love others
as much as we love ourselves.

I don't have to all figured out. I continually need
to allow the knowledge that I am Beloved be a filter
for my thoughts and my actions. Instead of letting my
emotions and experiences dictate my worth, I allowed
God's acceptance of me and His love dictate it.

"The truth," Henri Nouwen wrote in The Life of the
Beloved, "even though I cannot feel it right now, is
that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's
eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held
safe in an everlasting embrace . . . We must dare to
opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our
emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into
self-rejection."

If you truly believed that you are "beloved" and you
lived out of that tender affection, How would that
change us?

In an interview I read with B. Manning, he recalls a
7-month retreat he took in an isolated place. For 7
months, he saw no one. During this time, he was
powerfully convicted by the revelation of God's love
in the crucified Christ. On one winter's night, he
received this word from the Lord: "For love of you I
left my Father's side. I came to you who ran from me,
who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For
love of you I was covered with spit, punched and
beaten, and fixed to the wood of the cross." Brennan
would later reflect, "Those words are burned into my
life. That night, I learned what a wise old Franciscan
told me the day I joined the Order -- 'Once you come
to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the
world will seem as beautiful or desirable.' "

Conclusion
Because we have been Adopted as sons through Jesus
Christ, we Must define ourselves as radically beloved.
How do we cultivate this? B. Manning emphasizes
spending time alone with God. "The indispensable
condition for developing and maintaining the awareness
of our belovedness is time alone with God." John
didn’t begin defining himself by Jesus’ love until ch.
13 of his gospel account. As he walked with Jesus,
and learned more and more about him, he began to refer
to himself as "the disciple who Jesus loved".

Another way to cultivate this is through silence &
solitude. Theologian Edward Schillebeecx says this:
"In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value
in itself and for its own sake, just because God is
God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being
with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is
to gouge the heart out of Christianity." In solitary
silence we listen with great attentiveness to the
voice that calls us beloved. See R. Foster's book,
"celebration of Discipline" for more instruction.

Brennan Manning also talks about the importance of
silence and solitude before God. "There is a real
confidence that if I just create the space, if I am
just still again before God, that sense of belovedness
will return. That’s what the Psalms say and it’s true.
'Be still, and know that I am God' (Ps. 46:10). The
Hebrew word for know there means 'to experience.' If
we become still, we will begin to experience. The
wisdom of God is to become still. We need to still the
noise and the clamor and the chatter of our lives and
just wait. He will make us aware of His presence.

This may seem like a very inward focused message, but
I believe that if we could grasp the depth of this
love that God has for us, our lives would be forever
changed. "How great is the love the Father has
lavished on us, that we should be called children of
God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1

My final question today is do you truly know the love
of Christ? Do you not just know it in your head, but
do you experience in your heart? And does it affect
every part of the way you live your life?


=====
"The lions may grow weak and hungry,
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing."
Psalm 34:10

www.brennakate.com
www.livejournal.com/~brennakate

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