Today I really am blogging just for me, not because I want to share it for other people to read so forgive me if it's not too coherent and also very long.

Last wednesday was our lifegroup night. There weren't too many of us and we'd wanted to follow up on last Sunday's teaching about destroying idols in our lives. We had a short bit of teaching from Tom, reminding us of what was taught last week, then went individually to a space to be quiet and still before God for about 15 minutes, asking him if there was anything he'd like to bring up, talk with us about, then we came back together to worship. It was a beautiful evening.

In my time, I asked Jesus what he wanted to say and, a little surprisingly to me, he answered straight away talking about how much he loved me, then to look up 1 Corinthians 13:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails."

When I read this normally I have read it in terms of me needing love in order to make anything worth anything and of vs 4-7 being something I should strive to be like towards others. Suddenly I was drawn to read it in a different light, as only the Holy Spirit can enable you to do sometimes: where it says 'have not love' suddenly I was drawn to read it as 'don't know how much I (Jesus) love you'; that where it talks about what love is, it moved from being a list of how I should be towards others to being a list of how God's love is for me; that if I achieve so much for the Lord in this life but don't know he loves me then it is all worth nothing. 

Needless to say I cried quite a lot, touched deep inside. Last week was a pretty hard one - coming off the last bit of my medication, PMS and having some weird neurological things going on all at once - I was in a pretty rough space. It lifted me and other little reminders along the way have kept me there (along with the side effects of the withdrawal from the drugs wearing off, PMS going, getting some good sleep and seeing the doctor!). The latest nudge was a song sung this morning which I think I posted about a while back, but will do so again. Today's talk, or rather the piece I was struck by most by it, was about intimate relationship with God and at the end Dan got up and sung the song by John Mark McMillan: Oh how he loves us