What Are You Taking Hold Of?

How Receiving God's Love Rewrites Your Story

The more I sit with this, the more I realize something.

We hear great sermons every week.
We hear anointed teaching.
We hear beautiful truth.

All of this we need.

But one of the things we don’t slow down and talk about deeply enough?

God’s love.

Yes, the entire Bible is wrapped in His love. Every story. Every covenant. Every rescue. But rarely do we pause and ask a deeper question:

Have we actually received it?

Because here’s what I’ve noticed.

You give someone a compliment and they say,
“Oh, I don’t know how to receive that.”

You give someone a gift and they say,
“I’m better at giving than receiving.”

And I can’t help but wonder…

Has that same mindset carried over into our walk with God?

“God, I’ll serve You.”
“God, I’ll worship You.”
“God, I’ll love You.”

But receiving His love?

That feels harder.

Because somewhere deep down we think:

“I’m not lovable.”
“I’m too broken.”
“My past disqualifies me.”
“He couldn’t possibly feel that way about me.”

So let’s talk about it.

Receive.

It’s a word we use all the time as believers.

Receive Jesus.
Receive grace.
Receive the gift of salvation.

But have you ever stopped to ask what that word actually means?

In the New Testament, one of the primary Greek words for receive is lambanō (λαμβάνω).

And this is where it gets interesting.

Lambanō doesn’t mean politely standing there while something is handed to you.

It means:

To take hold of.
To grasp.
To seize.
To make something your own.
To actively accept what is offered.

That shifts things, doesn’t it?

Because so often we picture receiving as passive. Gentle. Quiet agreement.

But this word is active.

It’s intentional. It’s stepping forward and taking hold of what’s being offered. And when you start seeing it that way, you notice how often Scripture uses this word.

Receive Christ.
Receive grace.
Receive the Spirit.

It’s everywhere.

Which means God is inviting us to participate and take ownership!

John 1:12 says,

“But to all who believed Him and accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God.”

That word accepted?

That’s lambanō.

To take hold.
To make it yours.
To seize it.

Which means becoming a child of God isn’t just mental agreement.

It’s stepping into it. It’s taking hold of the identity He’s offering.

And here’s the question we have to ask ourselves:

Have I truly taken hold of His love?

Or have I simply agreed that it exists?

Because if we don’t take hold of what God says about us, we will take hold of whatever voice defined us first.

And I know this personally.

Meet Darth Vader

When I was in 8th grade, I had a teacher everyone called “Darth Vader.” If that nickname doesn’t tell you enough, I’m not sure what will. Mean defined her to a T.

She gave us a pre-algebra test one day to determine whether we were ready for algebra the following year so I took the test… and I failed it.

When she handed it back to me, she didn’t just circle the grade and move on. She looked at me and said, “Don’t ever take algebra. You’re no good at it.”

But what I actually heard wasn’t about algebra.

What I heard was, “Tracee, you’re stupid.”

And that sentence quietly marked me for the next fourteen years.

It became this low hum in the background of my life. Every time I struggled with something in school, that voice would whisper, “See? You don’t get it because you’re just dumb.” It didn’t shout. It didn’t need to. I had already received it.

That’s the part that gets me now.

I didn’t just hear those words.
I took hold of them and receive it as my truth.

I made them mine.

And they shaped how I saw myself.

Years later, I was flipping through channels and landed on a PBS math program. I overheard the teacher saying, “I’m going to teach you how to do algebra.” And something in me stirred. I don’t even know why. I just decided I’ve got to know if I’m really as stupid as that teacher said I was.

So I showed up the next day. And the next. And the next.

And somewhere in the middle of those lessons, something clicked.

I wasn’t dumb.

Darth Vader was wrong.

That moment wasn’t just about math. It was about identity. It was about realizing that I had been living under a lie I had received as truth.

And that’s when it hit me:

If I could take hold of a lie and let it define me for fourteen years, what would happen if I took hold of what God says about me with that same intensity?

Because that’s what lambanō does.

It takes hold.
It takes ownership.
It makes something yours.

The real question isn’t whether we’re receiving something.

The question is — what are we receiving?

Because if you don’t notice, we are always taking hold of something.

A voice.
A memory.
A label.
A truth.
Or a lie.

There is a difference between agreeing that God loves us and actually letting that love define us.

Agreeing says,
“Yes, I know God loves me.”

Taking hold says,
“That love determines who I am.”

And that difference shows up in how steady we live.
In how we respond.
In how we see ourselves.

So maybe the invitation today is simple:

Stop politely acknowledging God’s love and instead, take hold of it! Let His love define who you are.

Because when His love becomes the loudest voice in your life, all the Darth Vader lies you’ve been listening to fade away…..