Essential Characteristic

I'm down in Mount Vernon for a few more hours and I'm helping my friend Stevie with a paper. She has to take a hymn and a contemporary praise chorus and compare and contrast them. Her contemporary song is Amazing Love, and her hymn is And Can it Be? As I'm reading the lyrics of of the hymn I saw something in verse two that caught my attention.

"He left His Father's throne above, so free, so infinite His grace! Emptied Himself of all but love, and bled for Adam's helpless race."

Emptied Himself of all but love, this phrase is so essential. 1 John 4.8, "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love."

Philippians 2 tells us that He emptied Himself and took the form of a man, He became nothing, a servant, and died on a cross. He gave up Heaven, He set aside His heavenly form, He became a man, but He never gave up His essential characteristic, Love. He never gave up love because He couldn't. If He had, love would have ceased to exist.

Over the last year I've been through a lot, and as I look back I try and see what God was teaching me.

No matter how many times I break God's heart He will never stop loving me.
The goal and purpose of life is becoming like Christ and helping others become like Christ.
I need to Live in the Spirit, Preach the Gospel of Jesus, and Glorify the Father.
This is all about God, and everything comes back to love, which comes back to God.

I'm still learning and I have other thoughts, most likely I'll blog about them soon, but those three lessons have been transforming my life and ministry for the last year.

He emptied Himself all all but Love, He set aside everything but His most essential characteristic, and even when I go through junk, that essential characteristic never lets me go, never stops teaching me, never stops loving me.

Peace be with you