Lesson 12. What Do I Receive in Love?

It is very important to understand what love gives me and what I receive together with this gift.

Love is the most precious Heavenly treasure; nothing greater or more valuable exists or ever will exist. Yet it is offered to us very unobtrusively and given with great care and tenderness. When granting love, the Lord perfectly controls how I perceive it and my ability to receive it. My interest, understanding, thirst, and desire to possess it are all taken into account. Perhaps no other biblical gift of Heaven receives such close attention as the gift of love, when a person’s true needs and necessities are examined.

By asking God for love, I am essentially expressing my desire to become one with Him, to enter into a marriage covenant with Him, and to know Him so closely and deeply that it is difficult even to describe.

A person may ask for love indirectly. This happens when I pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and for His power to meet my spiritual needs; when I ask Jesus to become my Friend and to live in my heart in all His fullness; when I ask the Father to reveal the beauty of His law, His character, and His glory; and when I ask for power to overcome sin and harmful habits. Yet indirect requests can limit God and restrain Him from pouring out the fullness of love. In this gift, I receive everything listed above and much more that love conceals and carries within itself.

For example, if one considers my attempts over several years to describe love in human language according to my understanding, my inability to reveal all its variety, depth, and breadth becomes evident. I have managed to describe only a small part of the greatness and beauty of love. If volume is used as the measure of comparison, all my accounts are a little puddle within a vast ocean. Yet this meager human knowledge has an advantage. The tiny puddle is connected to the ocean of God’s love, and therefore it will never dry up, never lose its power, and never cease to exist. Perhaps I am diminishing it, but it is better to be humble and continually need God’s love than to overestimate my abilities and become self-confident. In any case, I cannot imagine self-confidence in love; such a thing simply cannot exist.

Love contains all the blessings and treasures of Heaven. It brings everything into Heavenly harmony; it is beautiful and calm. Love is like a quiet river whose waters appear very smooth and harmless. When you place an obstacle in its way, it flows around it. You immerse yourself in it, and it hides and absorbs you while allowing you to remain yourself. You build a dam, and the water rises, fills every open space, reaches the edges, pours downward as a waterfall, and calmly continues flowing. A river has no obstacles except fierce frost capable of penetrating to its very depths and binding everything with ice. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. In every other circumstance, love does what God gives it to me to do.

In the gift of love, I receive God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Each of Them abides within me in all His fullness, while leaving me an ordinary human being with my inherent weaknesses, concerns, and needs, but with a completely different consciousness. Life’s priorities change, spiritual values come to the forefront of my mind, and I become a truly free person. God receives authority in my heart to write His laws upon it, place right thoughts within it, order my life, protect me in a special way from evil in this world, carry me in His arms, and exert His influence through me. God does not advertise me, but He accomplishes in my life what pleases Him.

Life in love becomes truly romantic and interesting. I love—and it brings such joy; it is so beautiful, so mysterious, and so delightful! Sometimes I ask, “Is this really me?”

God is generous in His gifts, but when He decides to give Himself in response to my desire to possess Him in the gift of love, He studies me very carefully and weighs everything, taking my true motives and needs into account. My thirst to have God and live in love, my desire to possess this love—all of this, which proceeds from Him, gives me the right and gives Him the authority to satisfy my desire and adorn my life with Himself.

God is great in love. Yet He remains very humble and quiet, awaiting every opportunity to reveal Himself.

Because there is no form or majesty in Him and nothing evident to attract our gaze, the problem arises that we do not understand the full value of this gift of Heaven. Yet love exists; it is eternal and great in its might, although people value it little and do not greatly desire it. But I specifically choose love, becoming its rightful possessor. God clothes me in it and admires what I have become. He shows me to His angels and rejoices over the new masterpiece of His love.

1. Please read Ephesians 3:16–19; John 13:34–35; 1 Peter 1:22; and 1 Corinthians 13:1–8 in the light of this lesson.

2. What did you understand from this lesson?

3. Do you desire to become the possessor of something greater than you that cannot be contained within your consciousness?

4. Do you believe that love is available to everyone who thirsts for it and asks for it?

5. Why does the Lord not give the gift of love indiscriminately to everyone?

6. Why does the Lord desire, more than we do, to give us what we do not desire to receive or ask for?

7. What does a person receive in the gift of love?