Love in Many Languages

I feel emotionally heavy today. Thinking of friends, praying for their struggles and trials. Hoping against hope that they can find that light at the end of the tunnel—no matter how small that light is (sometimes for me it’s like a pinpoint of light, so small is it!).

There is one friend that I have that can somehow lift my spirits above all the other ugly stuff. He smiles a lot and has written me the most amazing love letters! In those letters he tells me not only that he loves me but that I am worthy of his love. Having spent some time in the emotional low-places that life can offer, knowing that he thinks me worthy is something that I find astonishing and that I am eternally grateful for. His love and kindness, the grace that he extends even when I screw up royally, the mercy in his words to me…they humble me and make me feel like weeping. He wipes my tears away when I cry. Makes me laugh and sing when I’m happy. Sometimes when I want to hide away under the covers of my bed and never look outside again, he yanks back those covers and says, “BOO!” with a smile and a word of love for me that shows me life is indeed worth living.

My friend is named Jesus. Almighty God is my best friend! I’m friends with the Creator of the whole Universe! And He says I’m worthy of that friendship. He says that he chose me in Himself, before the world was even conceived… and that in choosing, he would see me to be holy and blameless in His sight. That in love, He predestined me to be adopted… adopted!... through Jesus Christ for His own self! That His favor and His will, to the very praise of His most glorious grace…oh… He FAVORED us… handed down His glorious favor… in the person of Jesus Christ! (From Ephesians 1:3-6) I’ve been adopted by God as His child. His friend. The lover of my soul.

God’s love is so evident in everything that I am stunned when I find that there are those who cannot—will not—believe that He loves them. A person has their lifetime…until that last breath is breathed…to come to that understanding. His love is a GIFT. In rejecting His Gift, we are in effect turning Him away, calling Him a liar when He has gone so far out of His way to show us His love in the person of His Son. His Word tells us over and over and over of His love for us… and not just SOME. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” we’re told in Romans 3:23-25, “They are justified freely by His grace through the REDEMPTION that is in Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.” And lest that word “propitiation” throw you, here’s what that word means: “In Christianity, Propitiation is a theological term denoting that by which God is rendered propitious, i.e., that 'satisfaction' or 'appeasement' by which it becomes consistent with His character and government to pardon and bless sinners. The propitiation does not procure his love or make him loving; rather, it renders it consistent for him to exercise his love towards sinners.” See? He doesn’t HAVE to love us… He CHOOSES to. Further in Romans 8:1 it says, “Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death…” But the part that takes my breath away…the part that makes me want to declare to the heavens is this, in Romans 8:35-39:

31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He did not even spare His own Son, but offered Him up for us all; how will He not also with Him grant us everything?   33 Who can bring an accusation against God's elect? God is the One who justifies. 34 Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the One who died, but even more, has been raised; He also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. 35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: Because of You we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. 37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Pain has a funny way of warping our vision. In rejecting God’s love, we are rejecting Him. His word says that God IS LOVE. Love in spirit, and through Christ, love in flesh. 

Sigh.

Enough for now. My brain is aching. J Much love…

A.