What Controls You?

There is a reoccurring theme that I can't seem to get away from.  Whenever I open the Word of God, there it is illuminating from the pages.  When I go to open a book to read, it's popping off the pages.  When I hear sermons on the radio it seems to be the message of the preacher as he speaks to me in my car as I am driving.  God has me focused on His love.  I don't think I've ever had a theme verse, but I would have to say that 2 Corinthians 5: 14 has me hooked.

"For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, there all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised."

The question that keeps going around and around in my thoughts and heart is, does the love of Christ control me? What does control me? What rules me? What motivates me? What brings a smile to my face? Is it the love of Christ? Christ's love drove him to the cross.  His love for me is why I may live.  If I am controlled by Christ's love than I no longer live for myself but for HIM.  When people meet me or speak with me do they experience the love of Christ?  Do my children experience the love of Christ because of me?

"The secret of the early Christians, the early Protestants, Puritans & Methodists

was that they were taught about the love of Christ, and they became filled with a knowledge of it.

Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it.

He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there.

It is plain lie to suggest that people who regard this knowledge of the love of Christ as the supreme thing are useless, unhealthy mystics.  

The servants of God who have most adorned the life and the history of the Christian Church have always been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all,

and they have spent hours in prayer seeking His face and enjoying His love.

The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy man

can do in a century.  God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself.

Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive ever be the love of Christ."

Martin Lloyd-Jones, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 253

I want to sit and bathe in the love of Christ.  I don't ever want to leave the foot of the cross that displays His love for me.  The wrath of God is no longer for me because I am washed by the blood & love of Christ.  Are you controlled by the love of Christ?