Everybody wants to be loved. Everybody.
It’s an innate desire at the core of who we are as humans. We were born to love because love is a GREAT thing. It’s a gift from God!
That is one of the reasons why I spent an entire chapter in Finding Joy Beyond the Headlines focusing on how God loves people through the news headlines. It’s not always obvious, but it’s always there.
Check out the four people highlighted in that chapter if you haven’t already!
I love my wife. We will celebrate our ten-year wedding anniversary on July 4. Talk about fireworks!!!! I knew from Day 1 that she was special. I love her more today than ever before. I’m excited to see what our love looks like ten years from now!
When I talk about loving my wife, I mean it in a different sense of the word than how our Heavenly Father capability to love. I can only love her as a fellow human, which means to support and encourage her while we are here on Earth. God can love her on a whole other level. He loves her as his created child, a special work of art, and his eternal roommate on loan to this planet for a few decades.
God’s love for us far outweighs our love for each other. There is no comparison. When I think about Godly love, I see three incredible traits we could never achieve on our own. God’s love is:
1) Unending
2) Unfailing
3) Undeniable
Let’s talk about God’s UNFAILING love. People fail all the time. We break hearts almost as often as we break promises. It’s in our nature. We are not good at loving our neighbor as ourselves, like the bible commands us. The same mouth we use to whisper sweet words to our children is the same voice we use to curse at strangers in traffic. We fall so short of the biblical standard for love that it’s a wonder we bother to use the term “love” at all. We really have no idea what it is. That’s not the case with God. His love will never let you down.
PSALM 63:5 “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.”
As for God’s UNENDING love, we just can’t conceptualize something so deep and powerful as his feelings for us, his children. Earthly love ends ALL THE TIME. The divorce rate is high in the United States. Will your marriage work? It’s as certain as a coin flip. People fall in and out of love all the time. That’s because we have shifting definitions of “love”. By contrast, God’s love NEVER ends. He’s in love with you today and He will love you tomorrow, a decade from now, and so on into eternity. The bible says God knew you before you were born. He loved you while you were growing in your mother’s womb. He loved you before she knew she was pregnant! That is love!
JEREMIAH 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
Being able to rely on God’s unfailing and unending nature when it comes to love is extremely important, but perhaps an even greater revelation is how God’s love is truly UNDENIABLE. The most famous verse in all the world is John 3:16. Atheists know this one. “For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only son” to die on a cross for you. Would you do that for someone you hate? Would you do that for someone you barely tolerate? No and no. You only do something so drastic for someone you are madly in love with. How could he not love you? He made you!
JOHN 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
We will continue to get this love thing wrong. As long as there are horrible examples of love littered throughout news headlines, movies, and daytime TV, our versions of love will look shattered and incomplete. Continuing to love the world’s way will not stop this pattern. With heaven’s help, we can find the blueprint to loving God’s way. Get on your knees tonight and say a thank you to the Creator for loving you in unfailing, unending and undeniable ways.
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