“I call love the “last experiment,” because though it is the closest and most fundamental thing in a person’s life, it is the last thing he will turn to for help when he is in distress.In talking to you about love I shall not get mushy and sentimental. For love is everything that sentimentalism is not. Love is power, while sentimentalism is the misuse of power. In its practical application love is as precise and scientific as mathematics. Without it there could be no universe, no cell organization of any kind. Because love is the only integrating power in existence. It is all that can establish order out of chaos or maintain order in chaos. Whenever it is recognized by man he likewise recognizes harmony. Love is never a disintegrating force. Science deals with disintegrating natural forces; but wisdom deals with the power of love. Natural forces lead to change: love to permanence. Love simplifies life. All that is less than pure love complicates it. Love is endurable, eternal. It is the one ultimate expression which can combine and sustain all principles of the natural and spiritual worlds. Its application releases the soul of man from the bondage of limitation. Love is God in action. And the process of becoming the doctrine of love is to grow into oneness with God.The beautiful thing about the doctrine of love is that it casts out all fear, all striving and struggling. You merely act and express the virtues and qualities of love, and all that is needed to sustain you in happiness and harmony are inevitable consequences of your action. You are attached to nothing except the action of love. You desire no results; but possess perfect assurance that the correct results necessary to your life at a given time will be supplied. The sense of impending insecurity is unknown to him who lives the doctrine of love.” ~Starr Daily

These words, written by Starr Daily, have stayed with me today. When did he write them? After years of crime dotted by occasional imprisonment, he was robbing the home of a priest. The priest caught him, and asked him to sit down for a chat (and later, a meal). Going against every criminal instinct he had, Daily obeyed. What followed was a conversation about God that he had never heard before. Instead of fire and brimstone and wrath and vengeance, Daily heard for the first time about a God of pure love. It changed him forever, and now he writes these words of revelation on love which are changing me.

God’s been showing me so much about what love is. He’s been really working in me to bring my walk into obedience with it. Daily looks at love from another angle; the power in love when you stand on it and use it. Me? I’m just trying to submit to it. But when honed and utilized, and with God’s help, pure love (and nothing short of it) can stop a robber in his tracks, break the bondage of prison, heal the sick, be a light to the hopeless. For today, I struggle with simple obedience, but the above words are giving me a glimpse of where I want to be in my walk under the ‘love doctrine’. I pray with every fiber of my being that I become this strong of a vessel of God’s love and light.

To read Daily’s whole book, “Love Can Open Prison Doors”, go here. It’s a story of the development of Christianity in the unlikeliest of candidates – a  story of how God works in love and the chains his love can break. I chose the title of my post for this reason – action. We can break chains if we stand on God’s love (and follow His will in that particular situation). You don’t  need to get robbed in order to be used like this, and you certainly don’t need to be a priest. But I hope you do read this story as a testimony of what God can do – and then spend some time in prayer over what you can do as His vessel.

God bless!

~Rebekah A