When I was heading into this season, something that the Lord spoke over my time here is that I was going to learn love in a new way. Man oh man, if only I had realized how much He had in store here.
Each day since team leading for Gap D began, the Father has so kindly given me a greater capacity to love. To love and be loved by those around me, to see the way others love, and to feel the love of the Father in new ways.
For me personally in this season, learning the Fathers’ love in new ways has looked like knowing my identity as a daughter and getting to live from that place daily. It’s also looked like learning what it means to be the bride of Christ and trying to wrap my head around the Lord’s heart for me in a new way.
For my team, it’s looked like giving away that Agape type love with each and every breath and action we take. Prior to meeting my team, Love was something that the Lord specifically spoke over this team. Ever since about a month before coming here, my prayer over this group of women has been Ephesians 3:14-19. “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
ROOTED AND ESTABLISHED IN LOVE!! There’s honestly no better way to describe what’s happening both in my heart and in my team’s hearts. What’s funny is that when I told my team that the Lord had spoken “a team of love” over them, they decided to go with Agape as our team name. The word Agape is a Greek word that means “. . . unconditional love. This is believed to be the highest type of love, and it is the love that Jesus has for his children. Agape involves feeling so much love for someone that you put them above yourselves”. With that being said, the women on team Agape truly live out their name each day. Every day as I get to see them dive deeper and further into intimacy with the Lord, I get to see how the Father also grows their capacity to love. In this season of leading these six women, it has truly been a time of learning more and more of what the Lord meant when He commanded us to love on another.
Agape has taught me a new, more intentional, deeper form of love, and it’s the sweetest love I’ve ever known. Unconditional love. Something so simple yet so beautifully challenging. By walking alongside these men and women of Gap D, there are days when I’m exhausted, days when I feel defeated, and then there are days where I sit in so much awe and celebration. So often I just want to cry when I look at the men and women around me and just let my heart soar with how much I love them. And on the days where I think I can’t love any deeper than I already do, the Father continues to grow my capacity to love. I think as humans we will never fully be able to truly grasp how wide, long, high, and deep the Fathers’ love is for us—which is the most beautiful thing when you really think about it. Praise God it’s a love so big that we can’t help but dive deeper and deeper into it each and every day of our lives.
