The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s love from head to heart for Christian professionals
You cannot think your way into loving Jesus more. God’s love has to move from your head to your heart. That is what this year taught me, and this is how it happens.
One year ago I started CHEWing throughout the day. Not just a morning reading. Returning to it. Holding it. Letting it run underneath everything else I was doing.
Last week, sitting in the car, I found out what twelve months of that produces. It is not what I thought it would be. It is better.
C.H.E.W. with Me
C — Clarity — Love that lands, not love you file
I could quote the verse for years. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). I believed it in my head. I did not feel it in my chest. That gap is the whole problem.
A Christian with head belief and no heart landing works harder and loves less. That was me for two decades. Sharp theology, tight schedule, thin joy. The verse was true. The truth had not moved.
CHEWing is not more study. It is the slow work of receiving the love you already know is there.
H — Hear — The verse that changed my life
The verse that changed my life was Jesus praying to His Father about us:
“I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
Read it slowly. The Father loves you as much as He loves Jesus. Not almost as much. As much.
That sentence launched my whole call. If Christians, including me, could get that from head to heart, we would heal faster, grow faster, and get strategic clarity faster. And more than any of that, we would finally be able to obey the great command. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). You cannot love God with everything and love your neighbor as yourself out of thin air. You love because He loved first. So you have to study His love. That is what CHEWing is.
E — Exchange — The question that reshaped my year
This is where the year turned. I stopped asking God for insight. I started asking Him one question, over and over, in whatever place hurt or confused me that day. The form is always the same:
Because Your love is _____, how does that change _____?
The one I defaulted to most often was John 17:23. Because He loves me as much as He loves Jesus, what does that do to my anxiety right now? Because He loves me as much as He loves Jesus, how does that influence the decision I have been paralyzed on for a week? Because He loves me as much as He loves Jesus, how does that influence how I engage this painful trial?
Those questions did what a thousand sermons could not. I received more of what God actually says about me than I ever have in my life. Not verses I memorized. Him. Personally. In the exact place I needed Him.
Over 365 days, here is what CHEWing produced in me. This is not aspiration. This is inventory:
- More at peace, more secure, more sure He loves me
- Better decisions, slower, less impulsive, more flexible
- Handling trials and setbacks with joy inside heavy pain
- Eating healthy ninety percent of the time
- Sharper with time, fewer mistakes, more patient at home and work
- Discovering deep beliefs and repenting of them
- More fruit of the Spirit than I have ever known
- Happier, more positive, more optimistic
- Seeing my own sin without dwelling on it, because His love is bigger than my worst
- More resilient, anxieties consume less of me
- Getting back up faster from anxiety and despair
- Loving others better
- Better boundaries, removing trust when someone is unreliable
- Forgiving faster, confessing faster, thinking about myself less
If you read Paul writing “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19) and you see yourself in it, you are exactly the person this year is for. Paul wrote that and still knew, all the way down, that he was loved.
Now the question turns to you. Because God loves you as much as He loves Jesus, how would that change the one area you most want to see different a year from now?
Worth Sharing
“Head knowledge does not heal you. God’s love, landed in the heart, does.”
— The Daily CHEW™
W — Walk — Choose your anchor times
I still CHEW throughout the day. Not for a feeling. Because God’s love is the only fuel that produces the list above.
“So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, 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). That is a promise about your chest, not a poem.
The habit sticks when you attach it to something you already do. Mine is in the car when I drive. Others have told me theirs: before each meal, when they brush their teeth, the moment they wake up, right before they fall asleep, on the first walk of the day. Habit stacking is how CHEWing becomes automatic.
What are your anchor times going to be?
With you on the journey,
Ryan
CHEW on this today
Because God loves you as much as He loves Jesus, how would that change the one area you most want to see different a year from now?
Ryan writes these with AI to help him say it better. Read more →
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