ENDURING Love

After yesterday’s post and many comments about it on my facebook page my heart has been changed overnight. Well, not exactly.

This book that I mentioned before “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers is about God’s love for us. It’s description of the love between a Bridegroom and His Bride. I feel like I took the book the wrong way. The emphasis of the book wasn’t to raise arguments on who to marry and when. I think the author’s intent was for us to realize what we do to God as unbelievers and as believers.

It gives the story of Hosea in a whole different light. The prostitute wife is accepted into the arms of a husband who is full of truth and goodness. In that sense, an unbeliever is accepted into the wonderful arms of the Father. Though the cherished and love bride runs away again and again, the Father is always waiting or even searching for his loved one to return to him. Even though he was betrayed.

When I was reading the book it described HOW MUCH it hurt the husband when the bride ran away for foolish lies that were running through her head. Lies like:

“I’m not good enough. And never will be. Possibly never want to be”

“I can’t be used. I’m broken”

“God doesn’t love me”

Never have I realized how much those lies hurt God when we believe them. His only true desire for us is to accept him and trust the fullness of his love. We need to trust that “YES” he does love us. “YES” he can fix a broken person (He definitely has the power). With Jesus “YES” HIS love is UNCONDITIONAL. Unconditional meaning he’ll take everything. He’ll take lies, betrayal, pain, theft, death. The unconditional meant that God care for you as much as letting his own SON die just for our benefit. UNCONDITIONAL. Those lies we believe are LIES. LIES. LIES. We start believing them but God is the truest husband EVER. He only wants us to see that.

It is only when WE reject HIM. When we pursue other god’s like men, our passions, our wants, sin…. it looks like rejection to him. BUT, God in His own loving way takes us back, again… and again….. and again when we start pursuing him again. He even will pursue us when we have rejected him! “MY BELOVED, Put your name here, welcome home again. I’ve missed you.”

God chose the symbol of a Bride and Bridegroom because it is the most intimate love we know of. He didn’t say “BEST FRIEND” he chose LOVERS that have made vows toward a covenant.

A few years ago I was in a chapel during a worship night. I had so many things swarming through my head at that moment. I felt like I had the ugliest heart and that God wouldn’t accept me again. I was picturing his image of me and it didn’t look good. After I sat down for a while and prayed for God to forgive me did I hear it. “I LOVE YOU”. What? God, you aren’t judging me? You aren’t punishing me? You aren’t smiting me? “I LOVE YOU” Rang back in my head. I looked around and it was my friend telling me who was sitting next to me and giving me a hug. She was saying “God says, I love you. You are beautiful to me.” I started to cry. I was picturing God all wrong. God LOVES….. ME. Since then, never has God’s language been of hurt, or pain. It has always been of love. It doesn’t make sense. But that is the truth. I had believed the lies. I started to read every conceivable verse that talked about love. I definitely hadn’t understood it.

How much longer will you think of God that way? How many lies do you think you are still believing about him? This is what I want to start asking myself again after reading this book and rethinking it through. Maybe you do too?

1 Corinthians 13

¹ If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 John 3:16

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

John 3:16-17

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.