Loving God requires no effort, obeying God requires complete surrender, surrendering to God is the greatest evidence of my love for Him.  This is no game of wearing a persona because I need some identity to free myself of guilt, shame or so that I may be liked.  This is Love for someone who gave everything for me though I never had nor never will deserve His attention or appreciate fully His sacrifice.  I am the man who owed a debt greater than I could ever pay, not just philosophically but in real terms.  My God loved me enough to free me from the prison I created, that is something for which He rightfully deserves everything that I can and more.  At first, I was truly conscious of my indebtedness, my shame and thoughtfully determined to give my all to God.  Now it is habit built from years of having surrendered to His Good Will for my life and seeing repeatedly that it always brought me treasured peace, abundance and joy.

These trials are the trials necessary for my sanctification and freedom from the poisonous trappings of this world.  These trials are my temperance, my sharpening, honing, quickening and purification.  These trials are my fire, baptizing me in the Voice of the Holy Spirit of God, who walks through each flame with me.  I am acquainted with the feeling of these flames, how they seek to improve me, discipline me and harden my resolve.  They are my friends, sent by the Hand of God because He loves me enough to make me look like Him.  I am a son of God, a servant, remembering slowly my place in eternity, forgetting slowly my place in this world.  He shall give me rest and that is my greatest reward, to rest with Him.

Loving you requires all my effort, if done for my own volition and my own understanding or gain.  Loving you for Him is a reward, for it shows Him my love and acquaints you with Him, while allowing me to remain in close fellowship all the while.  These are the gifts of my life that I will spend eternity with millions whom I love, some that I have never met yet family none the less.  I pray that man feels the fires of salvation by the Holy Spirit of God.  For if they do then it means God has shown the truth of this life, sin, death and the need for salvation.  Tribulation is set to come to man, but with it great hope, the hope that all will suffer enough to cry out to God for rest and  protection.  That is the great harvest for which each of us has prayed.  The time in the history of man when all are painfully aware and conscious of God’s existence and His Wrath.  On that great day, His Will be done.  In Jesus’ Name.