I love you
I love you. These three words are used so often in our culture. We say I love you to people we met a week ago, or to family member we’ve never even met. We love people, we love our pets, we love food….the list goes on. So what does this word love mean? We throw the word around all the time, but do we have any idea what it means? The dictionary says 1. An intense feeling of tender affection and compassion 2. A passionate feeling of romantic desire and sexual attraction 3. A romantic affair 4. Strong liking for or pleasure gained from something. So this is our definition of love. We feel tenderly about someone, or we’re sexually attracted to them, a romantic affair, or we love them because we gain something from the relationship. Wow so that’s love. It sickens me that this is what the world has made of such a beautiful word.
We are so blinded by the world’s view of love that we can’t understand God’s love. The pastor will get up on Sunday and say God loves you, and immediately we go, “yeah I know He has an intense feeling of tender affection and compassion.” So basically He loves me because He feels sorry for me, or we look at it and say it’s his job to love me. We can talk and sing about His love all day without it ever affecting our emotions. If we really knew and really believed that He loves us we wouldn’t be able to stand it. We wouldn’t be able to talk or sing of His love without being overwhelmed with emotion. When is the last time that you where overwhelmed with how much God loves you? When is the last time you sat and just wept because He loves you?
“For love is as strong as death its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away” (Song of Songs 7:6-7). That’s a better definition of love. Love that is stronger than death…everyone dies at some point, but we are loved with a love that is stronger than death. It burns like a fire; have you ever seen a really big fire? Not only is it huge and overwhelming, but it spreads until there is nothing else left for it to burn. His love is consuming all of our being nothing can stop this love. No matter what you do…many waters cannot quench this love. He has loved you the same, and He will always love you the same. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He has loved us before we even knew to love Him, He has loved us even when He was getting nothing from us. He doesn’t need us, but He chooses to love us.
This is love. God is love. When we are able to lay hold of this reality that God the God of the Universe loves us. He doesn’t love me because He needs me, He doesn’t love me because He can gain something from our relationship, He’s definitely not sexually attracted to me, He doesn’t love me because He has to, He doesn’t love me because He feels sorry for me. So why does He love us? I don’t know. All I know is that He loves us so….oh how He love us. He doesn’t have to, but He does and we may never know why. So God loves us….what are we supposed to do now? Go deeper into His love find out more and more there is so to find out about His love for us; this is barely even scratching the surface.
Our goal is to love God with the same love that He loves us. When we get a new revelation of His love it enables us to love Him back with that same amount of love. This week ask Him to teach you how to love Him. Go through the scriptures and underline every time it talks about His love for you…trust me you’ll be overwhelmed.Just a heads up I will not be sending out an email next week I’ll be in annapolis visiting my sister :).God BlessAshley