Like A Child Dipping Its Tiny Shell

“A believing comprehension of God’s loving and loveable character and of the great love with which He loves His saints lies at the root of all Holy, filial and unreserved obedience.

“As there is no commanding, controlling, all-constraining power like that of love, so, in proportion to the deep view we have of the love of God to us in Christ Jesus, will be the response it awakens of confiding love in our hearts and of obedient love in our lives…

“Love is not so much an attribute of God as it is His very essence.  It is not so much a moral perfection of His being as it is His Being itself.  He would not be God if He were not Love; to deny that He is love would be to deny that He is God…

“…this is the central perfection around which all the others revolve as satellites, and from which, harmonized in the salvation of man, they derive their position and glory.  For example, omnipotence is the power of love, omniscience is the eye of love, omnipresence is the atmosphere of love, holiness is the purity of love, justice is the fire of love…

“Every creature must derive its love and its capacity for loving from God; but God derives His love and his power of loving from no other being but Himself…

“It is a great comfort to faith thus to deal with Him who is essential love; no fear about the sufficiency of His supply can haunt our minds.  I may fear that the river may dry out, but not the ocean that feeds it; that the beam may vanish, but not the sun that emits it; because their resources are within themselves, independent and inexhaustible.  And thus, when we come to God through Christ, as to a Father whose nature and whose name is “Love”, we are assured that, whatever sources of power and sympathy fail, God will never disappoint us.  Accepting our draft upon His all-sufficiency, He will honor it to its utmost demand.

“It is a serious defect in the religion of many that their faith deals too faintly with the infinity of God.  This leads to a limiting of the Holy One of Israel.  Finite beings ourselves, all our ideas and conceptions of God’s greatness are bound by the finite.  This restricting of Jehovah dwarfs our personal Christianity and robs Him of His divine glory.  But God is infinite, and therefore His love to us is boundless and fathomless.  This view of His infinite greatness is not intended to paralyze, but to strengthen our faith; not to repel, but to attract us.  The very immensity of God is one of our greatest encouragements to approach Him...

“Although in coming to His infinity we may appear like a child dipping its tiny shell into the depth of the ocean thinking to exhaust it, nevertheless, small though our vessel may be with which we draw, we must feel that nothing less than infinite love can meet the deep need and satiate the yearnings of our soul.  In proportion as the Holy Spirit leads us to see the depths of our sinfulness, poverty, and nothingness, we will learn that nothing less than a God of infinite love, grace, and sufficiency could meet our case.

--Octavius Winslow, Our God