August 11

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Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust. Psalm 143:8

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🔊 The main faculty by which a child receives its parents’ love is through the feel of a loving embrace; but in the spirit, the main faculty by which we receive a ‘loving embrace’ is through our ear. Our hearts are so unused to the ways of the Spirit that we often expect God to put His arms around us in a tangible way. While this is not impossible, it is not the way God has chosen to declare His love to us. God embraces us with His word of love. Love pours into our spirit in the same way that faith does – through hearing. God speaks, and the result is not mere information; it produces a melting of inner hardness. Hurts and resentments are washed from us as God speaks and refreshes our capacity to receive love. Jesus never spent time telling people He loved them, because that would have been merely informative. He talked to people about God and His ways, and as He did so God embraced people by His word, and the result was that people were grounded in God’s love. As we listen to God, we hear His word; His tone of voice makes His word liquid love. God can be likened to a fountain of life, to living water, and the liquid element is love. God pours through our spiritual senses, and we are washed and refreshed. God’s love washes our feet from our tired contact with a dry and dusty world. His love washes our minds from cynical reasoning. The result is a heart with a spring of unspeakable joy.