True Love

Happy Valentine’s Day!

When I see the advertisements for beautiful rose bouquets my memory takes me back to the first years Dave and I were married.

Dave worked in agriculture and near the fields he worked in were the fields of a commercial rose grower. The roses were grown for stock, not for flowers. When the roses bloomed, they were cut and left lying on the ground and the stock was harvested to sell to nurseries.

In those days, we didn’t have too nickels to rub together. On his way home from work – tired as he was, he would stop and go out into the fields and collect the buds and bring me a beautiful bouquet! He would do this several times during the growing season. What a guy!!

Here we are – 49 Valentines’ Days later and those are still some of my treasured memories.

We all know that love isn’t about a day. True love is a way of life.

“Dear friends, we should love each other, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child. And so everyone who loves knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love to us: He sent his only Son into the world to give us life through him. 10 True love is God’s love for us, not our love for God. He sent his Son as the way to take away our sins.” I John 4:7-10 ERV

True love is found in God. He IS love and all that love is, is found in Him.

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. 5 Love is not rude, it is not selfish, and it cannot be made angry easily. Love does not remember wrongs done against it. 6 Love is never happy when others do wrong, but it is always happy with the truth. 7 Love never gives up on people. It never stops trusting, never loses hope, and never quits. 8 Love will never end.” I Corinthians 13:4-8 ERV

Love gives and never gives up. Love forgives and forgets. Love is filled with hope and kindness.

We can never be separated from the unconditional love of God.

“Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love—not death, life, angels, or ruling spirits. I am sure that nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us or nothing below us—nothing in the whole created world—will ever be able to separate us from the love God has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39 ERV

The Father demonstrates His unconditional love to us each day of each year of our lives. God’s love for us will never end because God, Himself, has no end.

Happy Unconditional Love of God Day!

God’s Heart

Recently I spent the day with a group of ladies from Desert Christian Fellowship. They had invited me to be their guest speaker. The theme for the day was Bold Women of the Bible – one of those women was Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I talked of how Mary stood at the foot of the cross and watched her Son die. Her innocent Son had been condemned to death, a horrible death . She was faithful and stayed by His side through it all. I was overcome with emotion as I talked to these ladies, I put myself in Mary’s place. As a mother, I could imagine the pain.

How her mother’s heart must have ached!

Now stop and think how much the Father’s heart must have ached while Jesus hung on the cross? A Father whose whole character is love saw His Son brutally murdered. He could have rescued his Son but He didn’t.

God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, knew that a perfect sacrifice was required to redeemed mankind from their sin. That sacrifice would be Jesus.

“Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him would not be lost but have eternal life.” John 3:16 ERV

His heart was aching as His Son was being tortured but because of His love for us He didn’t intervene.

“Christ died for us when we were unable to help ourselves. We were living against God, but at just the right time Christ died for us. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else, even if it is for a good person. Someone might be willing to die for an especially good person. But Christ died for us while we were still sinners, and by this God showed how much he loves us.” Romans 5:6-8 ERV

God’s heart, his character, is pure love. His heart ached because sin separated Him from those He loves, from us. Don’t ever think it wasn’t heartbreaking for the Father to experience His Son’s death, it was. He endured it because of His unconditional love for us.

 Real love isn’t our love for God, but his love for us. God sent his Son to be the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven.” I John 4:10 CEV

He made a way to give us new life, to see us redeemed, it was the way of the cross! That’s God’s heart!