Hello and thank you for taking out precious time from your busy schedules, to join me for a few minutes. I so appreciate your friendship and support! It truly warms my heart and brings me joy to connect with you again. I hope you have found fulfillment in finding fun healthy activities this past week, that lighten your spirit and brings true enjoyment and happiness to your life. Please take a moment to be proud of yourself in doing so. The easier thing to do, is to do nothing to step out of your routine. It is so good for your soul to do so, way to go! If you haven't done this lately, I am sending you some encouragement to break out of your routine and take a step forward toward enhancing your life and experiencing joy and happiness in growing.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of spending time with my son for his birthday. We chose a fun and unique experience that we could do with my sweet mom, his precious fiancé and my treasured husband. We went to a business that offers painting on clay items. We had such a wonderful time exercising the right side of our brains and bringing out our artistic side. None of us had done it before and we were all looking forward to pushing out of our comfort zones, considering the fact none of us would consider ourselves painters. We sat together at a table for about 4 hours, after we picked out our items to paint. We had so much fun picking out the paint colors we wanted to us and make our objects come alive with personality and color! I highly recommend the activity to expand your horizons, especially if you have people in your party of all different ages. Sometimes it is hard to find an activity to do together if you have many different age groups :)


As I sit and ponder my last week and connect with what The lord wants me to write about in this post, one line I heard that resonates louder than any other, keeps swirling through my head. This is a big phrase to write about, but all I can do is take a step forward and write from the heart even though I would not consider myself an expert in this area. When my mom, husband, and I were watching a sermon on TV this past Sunday, I heard a wonderful line by Dr. David Jeremiah that has filled my mind and soul, and flooded my thoughts as I think about and marinate on the phrase more. There were so many good points to his sermon, but I found such clarity and truth in this one sentence, as I spent more time thinking about it.
Dr. David Jeremiah said, "Fall in love with God and do what you want to do." Wow, does that sentence pack a punch when you think about it, or what?!
"Fall in Love with God and do what you want to do." He says. I started to think, that sure could give license to go rouge, take advantage, let your hair down, throw caution to the wind, and shout "Yo baby, Party Time!" Writing on this subject motivated me to research some articles on what it means to Fall In Love. As I dove in deeper, I found some very good resources, I will share the links, as I proceed.
I looked up the definition of falling in love. Wikipedia defines it this way:
Falling in love is the development of strong feelings of attachment and love, usually towards another person.
Dictionary.com defines it as this:
Become enamored. This expression may be used either literally, as in John and Mary fell in love on their first date, or hyperbolically, as in I fell in love with that antique chair.
YourDictionary.com
(intransitive, reciprocal) To come to have feelings of love towards each other. They met, fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after. Wiktionary.
After reading these definitions, I picked out some of the individual words in these definitions:
Development, Attachment, Enamored, Towards. After pulling these words out from the definitions, I put the 4 words in a different order, and I came up with:
"Development towards enamored attachment."
When I began to think about those words individually, it helps me to wrap my arms around how our lives would go if we worked on our development toward enamored attachment with God. The Bible says: God Is Love. If God is love, and we all absolutely enjoy love, that means we should want to understand better and become closer to who God is. I am including a few passages in the bible where it reads, God is love, and I am also including what The Bible says about the characteristics of love.
1 John 4: 7-11 & 16
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another...
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
If you want to read more on what The Bible says about love, here is the full chapter of
1 John 4:
I cant write this post without including one of the most descriptive verses on the characteristics of love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails...
These are some verses in the bible you will frequently hear read at weddings, when two people are beginning their lives together as a married couple. Can you imagine how many more successful marriages there would be, if individuals would express love in this way toward one another?!
If God is the description of love in the above passage, and we spend more time getting to know God and His love, wouldn't it naturally move us toward understanding and embracing the character qualities of His love and be guided by them?! If LOVE truly is the end-all be-all, that fills us with happiness and joy, wouldn't we want to get to know the source of True Love better?! If we learn firsthand from the source, wouldn't that help make us better at this thing called love?! If we fall in love with God, who is love, wouldn't that help us to want to please Him because He gives us the unconditional gift of love. He loves us through our inadequacies and downfalls. The scriptures say, "He will forgive us" "He goes to prepare a place for us" "He walks with us" "He comforts us" "He guides us" "He protects us" "love never fails." If we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. I believe, the closer we get to God, who is love, the better our navigation, decision making, and conduct will be daily. If we strive to be in lock-step with The Lord and draw closer to Him, how can we lose.
Love conquers all.
They say birds of a feather flock together, so if we flock with God, the more we will be like Him and emulate His love. We are made in His image, all we need to do is spend more time with the source to get to know Him better. If we do that, we will see, He is for us and not against us. If you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and He created us and everything, wouldn't He give us a navigational book to help guide us?! God speaks over and over in His word, He will never leave us nor forsake us. He will never drop you off at the curb.
When we spend more time with the true source of love, we will realize He is for us and not against us.
(Romans 8:26-39)
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
More Than Conquerors
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I will include a link to the whole chapter of Corinthians if you would like to read it.
If we read and try and get to know "WHAT" and "WHO" love is, by spending time marinating on these definitions and scriptures on love and The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I think it will help us understanding better what it means to fall in love with "WHO" love really is.
We all have our struggles and our weaknesses and there are wonderful resources to help us along the way. It is easy to have a skewed concept of love in our lives. If we go to the wrong source of love, we can get off course easily. I think asking yourself if the thing or person you go to for love is damaging in any way, has ulterior motives, harms you, is not trying to make your life better, does not make you feel better after you have experienced it, is making your life worse or effecting it in a negative way, I think we need to get back to what the bible says love is and does. We can refer to the scriptures above.
I think sometimes we can feel distanced from experiencing true love because there is something that is separating us from love or distancing us from real love. A substitution or something artificial, is never as satisfying as the real thing. Sometimes a good food analogy will do the trick when trying to grasp a concept or get a point across. It's like eating a peace of warm fresh bread at a Mediterranean restaurant and dipping it in vegetable oil and vinegar, instead of olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, YUM!
Since I am writing about falling in love, I think most people want to feel true love in their relationships as well. If we get closer to the true source of love first with Our heavenly Father, then we will grow in success with the rest of our relationships, especially in our marriages. Who doesn't want to experience the fullness of what love is in all aspects of their life?!
I found websites with many interesting articles on https://www.crosswalk.com/ and Newlife.com and https://xomarriage.com/ that I would like to pass on. These will give us some great resources if we want to learn more and develop healthy love in our lives.
These websites tackle various subjects more in depth and can help us get unstuck in different areas. These websites give healthy personal and relationship advice that can help with challenges we are experiencing, which can keep us from experiencing true love. Just a side note, some of these articles can get down to the nitty-gritty, so be prepared.
Here is a paragraph from an article I read from Newlife.
In John 15:5 Jesus says apart from Him we can do nothing. In other words, it’s impossible to live the Christian life without complete dependence on Him. It can’t be done alone. We have to choose whether we will move to numbing or escaping our pain and addictions by acting out, which leads to death. Or whether we will have complete dependence on God, which leads to life. The book of James chapter 1:2-4 tells us we will not escape trials and temptation; but if we stand up to them, make healthy choices, and depend on God for help, we will receive a crown of life.
Here are a few articles from one of the websites I mentioned above.
I hope this post will help motivate us to take steps toward growing toward true meaningful love in every aspect of our lives. I am including a song that just melts my heart when I listen to the music and the lyrics. It will help us in getting to know the true source of love.
I hope you enjoy it :)
Click on the link below to listen to this beautiful song:
You Know My Name

After I posted this blog, my long time beautiful and gifted friend and author Danae Dobson messaged me and wrote a commentary after reading my post Falling In Love. After letting her know how much I loved her comment and insight, I asked her if I could add it to my Post. Here is what she wrote :)
When it comes to loving God, there is one important aspect that isn’t fun to discuss but it is a primary principle in Scripture.
Here it is:
1 John 5:3 says, “This is love for God that we obey his commands and his commands are not burdensome.” In Scripture, the expression of our love for God is in our obedience to His commands and precepts. Obedience means being completely done with willful sin. It means surrendering our lives to Him and not withholding anything. This is how we love God in return for all He has done for us…most notably in sending His only Son to pay the ultimate price for our sin debt on that cruel cross, and offering us the free gift of eternal life. It brings tears to my eyes to fathom such great love. So undeserving and yet beyond measure. I’m honored to surrender my life to Him.
(Written by Danae Dobson)
I am so appreciative of the feedback and comments my readers leave! Thank you Danae.
As I sign off, I wanted to thank you for you and for spending time with me. I invite you to explore more on my website www.intoyourgrowth.com The "About" section will help you to learn more about my inspiration for writing this BLOG if you would like to read it. I would like to invite you to click on "BLOG" to see more of my previous posts, as only a few are shown on the front page. If you view this on your cell, you can click on the brown square menu button at the top of the HOMEPAGE or you can use the arrows below under the most recent posts, to find more. If you are encouraged by what you read, I invite you to "SUBSCRIBE" to this Blog (if you have not already done so) and you will receive notification via email when I publish a new post. I usually try to post on Mondays :) I would love to hear how your are doing on your journey, so I welcome any comments in the Comments Section.
Be well and God bless you. I will continue to keep you all in my thoughts and prayers.
Big hugs,
Jen Henry
Comments