Dangerous Women Pt. 2: Grounded in Love

So remember when awhile back I wrote a post on being a dangerous women? [Guys, if you've gotten this far, stick around... this applies to you too- the quote is just directed at women]. Here's a reminder of the quote I was writing from:

“A dangerous woman is alive! She knows she is deeply loved by God and grounds herself daily in that love. She delves deeply into the truth about who she is and claims her unique temperament, gifts, passions and dreams. She refuses to let fear stop her as she responds to God’s calling on her life. And out of her fully alive heart, she radically engages with the needs of the world.”- Lynne Hybels

I want to explore the next aspect of living a life that is dangerous to the kingdom of darkness- knowing you are deeply loved by God and being grounded in that love. 

If you think about it, this is the very same concept that I sign off with every post- live loved. So you might as well just read the post that describes why I sign off with that and be done with it. Just kidding. I'll give ya a little more.

You are deeply loved by God. You are deeply loved by God. You are deeply loved by God. I cannot say that enough, and you cannot hear it enough. So how do we root this truth so deep down into our hearts that we are grounded by it, that no earthly thing can tear it away?

Pray and ask God to open your eyes to His incomprehensible love for you. Ask Him to show you in new and big ways. Ask Him to make you aware of the little ways He loves you. Ask Him to cultivate in you a deep gratitude for His love.

Renew your mind and meditate on His Truth. Spend time in God's Word, keeping a look-out for truth about how much He loves you. What we spend time thinking on is what we start believing. If the thoughts you are thinking aren't true and don't line up with God's truth, get them out of there! Replace them with the truth you find in His Word.

Ground yourself in the truth of God's love for you DAILY. We're humans. We forget easily. Far too easily. The antidote to this is to remind ourselves often. Be asking God to open your eyes to His love daily. Meditate on the truth you find daily. Position yourself under His love daily. And maybe, just maybe His love will go so deep in you that you are grounded in it, rooted in it, like Paul talks about in Ephesians.

"...that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3: 17-19

Dangerous Women Pt. 1: Living Alive

“A dangerous woman is alive! She knows she is deeply loved by God and grounds herself daily in that love. She delves deeply into the truth about who she is and claims her unique temperament, gifts, passions and dreams. She refuses to let fear stop her as she responds to God’s calling on her life. And out of her fully alive heart, she radically engages with the needs of the world.”

I L.O.V.E. this quote by Lynne Hybels! I feel like it does a super job summing up what I want for my life and for the lives of the women that I encounter on a daily basis. I love it so much that I'm going to blog about it. Not once. Not twice. But as many times as it takes me to dissect this sucker 'til there's nothing left.

So for today, we're going to take a look at the very first line: A dangerous woman is alive!

What does this mean? What does it look like for us to "live alive?" This morning I read an article over on storyline that was all about living in the present, not going numb, and choosing to be invested in all the moments of our life- the seemingly boring, hard, or painful ones included. The author talks about her friend who has gone through more than most of us will ever have to and she writes:

"She wasn’t waiting for the good part. She knows that these are the good parts, even while they’re the bad parts. She wasn’t shut down, going through the motions. She wasn’t holding tight till this season passed. She was right there with me, right there with her kids, right in all the glory and pain and mess and beauty of a spring night in between everything.That’s how I want to be. That’s who I want to be: deeply present in the present, in the mess, in the waiting, in the entirely imperfect right now."

I think that this is part of living alive. Being fully present in the mess, fully present in the boring. Not allowing our circumstances dictate whether or not we're engaged in life. Choosing to invest and feel and continue on even through the times that seem too painful to even look at.

This is what it looks like to live alive: to be so secure and safe within our Savior's arms that we can be fully present and engaged in whatever circumstances we face, whether our flesh would deem them worthy of our investment or not, safe for us to be present in or not, and exciting enough for us to be engaged or not.

I want to be a dangerous woman. I want the enemy to shudder when I wake up and the Kingdom of God to be advanced through my day. I want my life to showcase Jesus- the only one worthy of shining a spotlight on.

But for this to happen, I have to live fully alive. I can't keep choosing which moments I want to be present for and which I will just allow my brain to check out of. I can't keep going numb when hard things happen, shutting down my emotions so I don't have to feel all the things that God has put inside of me. I can't keep waiting for the next big thing to happen, just ignoring all the wonderful beautiful little things God is doing around me everyday. I have to live alive.

Check out Part 2: Grounded in Love here.