Filled to overflowing!

I have a confession to make that I think affects a lot of us Africans. We grew up without much affectionate love from our parents. No hugs, No kisses, no endearments of any kind, nothing. They would beat you up when you did wrong and say they did it because they loved you and if they didn't love you they would not care. There is a lot of truth to that! In the process, we the kids never learnt to hug or kiss each other, or show any affectionate love towards one another. And Lord knows, if your parents even smiled at each other, we almost fell over from shock!

Well, because of that I grew up not knowing what I was missing out on until I went to the US for school and found families that were affectionate toward one another. I remember looking at my friends mom as though she had lost it because she thanked her daughter for helping with the dishes. Almost dying of embarrasment when my friends dad gave me a fatherly hug like he did his daughter, and not knowing how to respond when her brothers playfully punched me.

Because of the earlier lack of affectionate love, I came to regard God's love for me in the same light as my parents love for me. Shown through punishment and discipline. Affection was not something God could do for me. As I grow older, I find that my need for affection has become hard to avoid or ignore. However, since I grew up without it, I have no idea how to ask for it or show it really and often come off as being self sufficient and hard on the outside, which is nothing like what is on the inside. I still have no clue how to respond to affection from the opposite sex which may be one of the reasons I am still single.

Anyway, today I read Ephesians 3 and verses 14 - 19 had me in tears:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

I want to know his love. His affectionate love. It is the prayer of my heart today that I may grasp his love with my heart and never let go. That this love will flood my soul to the point where I am totally filled with all the fullness of God who is love. And I pray that you too will know this love that surpasses all understanding. That God will fill your heart this day and evermore with himself. Amen!