There is no Darkness in Love

I don't know if I have ever seen God move as strongly as He has been in our lives over the past five months. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe He wasn't moving because we simply weren't letting Him. But now, when He moves, it is powerful and life changing, and honestly, it really can't be otherwise!

Abby, who lives in our house with her husband Nick and daughter Brielle, has been coaching the Cheer team at our local high school these past several months. The reason she started coaching Cheer in the first place (never having had any cheer experience in the past) was simply in response to a desperate need at the school and a chance to bring some Light into a vast area of darkness. Over the past several months, though, God has been revealing to us more and more that our motivation for serving MUST stem only from Him, and not out of a human desire to "help" anyone. Our lives must be completely 100% Gospel driven, centered, and powered. Then we join God where He is already working, and live out the Gospel wherever we are, in every aspect of our lives.

With the Cheer team, we have been given a wonderful opportunity, and God has been slowly revealing His heart to us for these girls. While on school grounds everything has to be politically correct and "non-religious," outside of anything school related, we have free reign. So once or twice a month, Abby has a no practice day. Instead of practice, the girls have the open invitation to come over to our apartment and talk about God, faith, and whatever is going on in their lives. The past two times they have been here, several girls have opened up and shared some really difficult personal struggles. Some of these struggles stem from someone else injuring them, others stem from a soul that is desperately hungry and void of all love and truth. And both times, as I have prayed for wisdom and the words to respond, God has answered.

The words that I shared were simple, but they are Truth. Possibly the only Truth that these girls have ever heard. And I take comfort in the fact that maybe, just maybe, that Truth will not be forgotten. And that one day, that tiny seed of Truth might just blossom into a Love so great that it cannot be quenched or stifled. A Light that the world and all of its darkness can never snuff out. My prayer for these girls is simple. That they would be surrounded and filled with and come to fully know the Love that IS God, that is IN God, the Love that is greater than all darkness, and that transforms and renews our lives to the very core.

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." 1 John 4:9-10

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:16-19