-  I feel the closing of my days coming upon me. Even if I have twenty years left, it's nothing ...a blink. So, Lord, I want to use my time well. I want to hear Your Voice saying: "This is the way. Walk in it." Show me, Lord, where You want me to put my energy. I sense it has to do with "Going after a life of love." What does that look like, Lord? 

+ Think of the Last Supper. Think of Me surrounded by My friends ...those I had poured so much into ...those who had glimpses of My true identity. How I loved them, despite the fact that I knew one would betray Me, literally sell me out for a few pieces of silver and the others (all but one) would scatter and run to save their necks. My beloved leader of the pack would deny that he even knew Me. He who saw My Glory with his own eyes! So, there we were together, on the cusp of the moment of truth ...the manifestation of the Father's Love-poured out in response to His plan. On that dark night, knowing all the betrayal and fear in My friends' hearts, I invited them to feast with Me ... to celebrate the last Passover of the Old Covenant ...the leaving of Egypt forever. I gave them all the Love I had ...knelt before each one (including Judas, whose hard heart could not be melted by My Love) and washed their feet like a slave. I showed them what it looked like to follow the Father's ways. Then I fed them the celebratory meal, the thanksgiving offering that they were to understand more fully in time ... that I was the Lamb to be sacrificed and that it would be My Blood that would be their protection ...their salvation. Love empowered Me every step of that fateful night. Again and again, I revealed the heart of a Father Whose Love was willing to suffer so that all could be saved. 

You long to love well ...to be a good representative of the Father's heart. I am answering this prayer, right here, right now, with all the people in your life who you find difficult to love.  Trust Me. They are My instruments of training. When a boxer is in training, he lifts weights and does increasingly more difficult work-outs to empower him when he faces his challenger. He even is put in the ring with practice opponents, who test him for strengths and weaknesses. He needs to understand and shore up his vulnerabilities. If you can view your life as your training ground in the fight to love like I love, then every challenging person/scenario can be used by your Trainer, the Holy Spirit, to strengthen you ("harden you to difficulties" Isaiah 41: 10). As you grow in these workouts, He brings tougher and tougher challengers into the ring. And, unlike the boxer who must depend solely on his own strength, you have been promised that where you are weak - I am strong! You are not in the ring alone! The key in this training exercise is to choose to not view your opponent (the one who challenges your capacity to love) as someone to resist...but actually, as someone to embrace! You learn to disarm hostility with peace ...to overcome insults with kindness ...and to extinguish hatred with love! The Kingdom turns worldly wisdom upside down! So yes, you are in the ring and you will have opponents who magnify your inability to love the way you want to, but your goal is to have the strength to love your enemies as I did. If you can climb into every scenario, viewing it as a supernatural boxing ring, and face these challengers not as those who will take you down (into hated and judgment) but as God's trainers, put there to teach your spirit the Power and Strength of My Love, then, despite your weakness, you WILL be Strong in Me! You will be still, in wonder at who you can be in Me, and know that I am God. I am Your God ...Who is eager to empower you to love in and through My Gentle, Unfailing Love.