“O Glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine and I am thine”
Daily Scripture
Matthew 28:18-20, 1 John 4:7-13
Matthew 28
18 Jesus came near and spoke to them, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”
1 John 4
7 Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. 8 The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. 10 This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.
11 Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us. 13 This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Neither we nor John Wesley invented the “covenant” we renew at the start of 2026. Throughout history, God has offered this covenant to humanity in various ways—we simply renew and affirm our intention to accept God’s gracious offer. (“Covenant” appears hundreds of times throughout Scripture.) It is the eternal promise of the eternal God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) to love, accept, redeem, and connect with us, if we will accept God’s promise.
- Wesley didn’t write “O glorious and blessed God” and stop. He named the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—because that more fully confessed the God we serve. As Chris Folmsbee wrote, “Naming the Trinity is perhaps naming the biggest mystery of God in Christianity. To evoke the Trinity, then, in the form of prayer might very well be the most profound act a Christian can carry out.” * What do you find most mysterious about God? What most draws you to experience God’s life-changing love?
- One consequence of believing in the Trinity is that faith becomes inherently relational. The God we serve exists in eternal relationship—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and calls us into relationship as well. That’s why 1 John 4:8 declared, “God IS love,” and therefore “the person who doesn’t love does not know God.” How have you experienced God’s love through the love of other believers? How does that God-given connection differ from mere human liking or attraction?
Prayer
Prayer: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I love you. I want to honor you with my attitude, behaviors, and lifestyle. You are a relational God, and I aim to offer you my love with the way I treat others. Amen.
GPS Insights
Leah Swank-Miller
Leah Swank-Miller, who serves as Pastor of Care and Director of Student Ministries at Resurrection Overland Park, wrote today's Insights. A Kansas native, she has been a professional actress for nearly two decades, and she loves to see the vastness of God’s creation through theatre and the arts. Leah graduated with an M. Div. from Saint Paul School of Theology. Leah, Brian, and their two children love to play tennis, golf, soccer, and board games.
I love the ocean. As we embark on another new year, I am lost in thought, staring at an ocean so vast yet still so accessible that I can jump in and feel it as close as my own skin. I feel very blessed to be spending a much-needed vacation with my husband and two teenagers in sunshine and sand. It has provided much laughter, contemplation, connection (and maybe too much battered seafood).
I keep pondering John Wesley’s prayerful declaration—“O Glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine and I am thine” and how it holds together what Christians often struggle to keep in the same breath: God’s vast mystery and God’s intimate nearness.
In naming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Wesley anchors faith in the Trinity, not as a theological puzzle to be solved, but as a living relationship to be entered. The Trinity reminds us that God is not solitary or distant, but eternally relational—love shared, given, and received within God’s own being. This means that love is not something God does occasionally; love is who God is. When we are drawn into that divine life, we are drawn into love itself.
I must admit, the line “thou art mine” can feel almost too bold. How can the infinite God belong to us? Yet this is the grace of the gospel: in Christ, God chooses closeness. The Son makes the Father known, stepping into our humanity, our suffering, our ordinary days. God is not content to remain vast and untouchable. God comes near, takes on flesh, and says, You are worth coming for. That truth knocks me over like an ocean wave, tumbling under the cool water, refreshing, exhilarating, and a little bit out of my comfort zone.
And still, Wesley balances that daring claim with humility: “and I am thine.” This is surrender. We do not possess God; we belong to God. The Holy Spirit moves within us, shaping our hearts, drawing us toward holiness, and reminding us that our lives are held within something far greater than ourselves. The Spirit keeps the mystery alive—God within us, yet never contained by us.
Together, this prayer holds the paradox at the heart of Christian faith:
God is vast beyond comprehension, Creator of all that is.
God is mysterious, more than our language or doctrine can fully express.
And God is astonishingly close, bound to us in love.
Wesley’s words invite us not to explain the Trinity, but to trust it—to live in the wonder that the God who is beyond us has chosen to be with us and for us. In that sacred mystery, we find both deep belonging and holy awe: we are God’s, and by grace, God is ours. I’ve been sitting on this sandy beach for far too long. I muster my courage, dig into the sand, and run full force into a vast and inviting ocean, beckoning me to be courageous, vulnerable, and grateful. And so it goes, I dive into God’s love one wave at a time, Thou art mine, WOOSH, and I am thine, WOOSH!
© 2025 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Chris Folmsbee, The Wesley Prayer Challenge Participant Book, p. 112. For more on Trinity, see Adam Hamilton, Creed, pp. 89-98. Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
