This Valentine’s Day, amongst all the relationship posts, the messages on how to be a wife, tips on how to shoot your shot, etc., I wanted to do a blog post on the greatest, purest, breathtaking Love there is. This isn’t a long drawn out post with in depth teaching of the Word. This is simply a love post. A post where we together walk through some verses I’d like to share that have been sticking out to me recently concerning the love of God.
Society would have one to think that when they find a partner they find love but there is a greater love, a purer love, a breathtaking love that is unconditional, has been there all along and is never-ending...the love of the Creator for His creation.
“Long ago the Lord said to Israel: “I have loved you, My people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to Myself.”
Jeremiah 31:3 NLT
“GOD told them, “I’ve never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love!””
Jeremiah 31:3 MSG
God is Love (1 John 4:8). It’s not just something He does, it’s Who He Is. Because God is constant and unwavering, because He Is Who He Is regardless of people and circumstances, because He is everlasting, His love is the same.
People come and people go and those same people take their love with them but God’s love is ever-present along with His Presence.
In Jeremiah 31:3 God is straight forward about His everlasting love for us, however, the Word is full of God’s expression of His love more than His verbal exclamation of it.
Mankind tends to talk about their love more than they demonstrate it through their actions and I believe that’s due to people not understanding that love is a verb. Agape Love is Active Love. (But that’s a blog post from another day. To read up on that, check out Love.)
I want to begin by working through a few verses in Psalm 139. I love how David writes of his love for God and God’s love for us through His actions.
“GOD, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand. I’m an open book to You; even from a distance, You know what I’m thinking. You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of Your sight. You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and You’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too— Your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful— I can’t take it all in!”
Psalm 139:1-6 MSG
Nothing is hidden from God (not our secret sins, hateful intentions, dirty thoughts, private addictions) and yet still He doesn’t hide His love from us. Even in the mist of darkness He surrounds us with His reassuring Presence and faithful love.
“Is there anyplace I can go to avoid Your Spirit? to be out of Your sight? If I climb to the sky, You’re there! If I go underground, You’re there! If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, You’d find me in a minute— You’re already there waiting! Then I said to myself, “Oh, He even sees me in the dark! At night I’m immersed in the light!” It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to You; night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to You.”
Psalm 139:7-12 MSG
He pulls on our hearts and protects us in the times that seem dark. Our going and our coming, He’s fully aware. Wherever we go, He’s there waiting for us. There’s nowhere to escape His loving Presence. There’s nothing we can do to stop His love for us.
Romans 8:35-39 tells us that there’s nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ. Whether is be death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers, height or depth, or any other created thing, NOTHING and NOONE can separate you from the love of Christ. Not even you.
“Oh yes, You shaped me first inside, then out; You formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank You, High God—You’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, You know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, You watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before You, The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.”
Psalm 139:13-16 MSG
God spoke all of creation into existence, EXCEPT for man. He took the time to knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. We are handcrafted, one of a kind made by the Divine.
The Creator of the stars in the sky, the fish of the sea and the birds in the trees chose to make you by hand and says that you’re fearfully and wonderfully made.
God isn’t a careless Creator or a deadbeat Dad either. Like a loving Father, He watches over His children as they grow, flourish and become all they’ve been destined to be. He’s so intentional that He not only watches over our days but He has already prepared them . He is all throughout our them. He is ahead of us waiting and calling out as He walks along with us. His love all around us.
“How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, You are still with me!” Psalms 139:17-18 NLT
He knows what we think in secret and what we will say in days to come yet His love remains the same...not even His thoughts about us change. What a love!
If friends knew the things we’ve done, if partners knew the thoughts that crossed our mind, if fellow church members knew the things we said, the music we listened to and the things we watched when no one was around, they’d think differently of us.
It’s mind blowing how as sinful, fleshly people, we can turn our noses up and change how we feel about others because of the sins they struggle with but the heart of the sinless, perfectly perfect, indescribably pure, loving God never changes despite all that He knows about us. And this same love renews day after day, night after night, morning after morning!
“GOD ’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, His merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great Your faithfulness!” Lamentations 3:22-23 MSG
““This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His One and Only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”
John 3:16-17 MSG
While we were drowning in our sin, God reached in and pulled us up. It wasn't by our own asking but by His great love. This love is not condemning but gracious. He doesn’t simply confront our sins in order to hatefully judge and belittle us, but rather to pick us up, clean us off and purify us with His Spirit. We are never too far for His grace, love and mercy to reach us.
“When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished! ” Then bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.”
John 19:30 HCSB
“Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed His last.”
Mark 15:37 NLT
What beautiful love that the Father would send His Son to die for the world and that His Son would be willing to do just that!
Christ took His final breath on the Cross so that you and I could be free!
What literal breathtaking Love!!
“For while we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person — though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!”
Romans 5:6-8 HCSB
YOU. ARE. LOVED.
Also read Crazy Love by Francis Chan
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