Happy Valentine’s Day
Thursday February 14, 2013
We often read the description of love in Corinthians to take measure how we love others. Sometimes I find it helpful to use that passage to reflect on how God has loved me and to see the consistency of His caring presence in my life through so many circumstances when I didn't deserve anything but being judged and abandoned.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT)
God is always acting out of what He knows and sees. God has a deeply loving relationship available for me today and everything God does for me is based on this. God's character is always to love, always to be committed to, always to make available all the safety and security I long for. Relationship with God holds the promise of more – more knowing, more sharing, more richness in who we are and what we do, because we’ve done it in the presence of or in partnership with God.
That’s the promise and the joy of our relationship with God this Valentine’s Day.
That’s the promise and the joy of our relationship with God this Valentine’s Day.
What we know now and have experienced now is just a glimpse of the “more” that there is for us to enjoy. The wonderful safety of it all is that there is nothing that can keep us from the experience of that love, if we choose it – no law, no obligation, no failure, no expectations. God simply loves us, fills us with His Spirit, and proceeds to pour out love and kindness, peace and gentleness, goodness and patience on us so we can pour it out on our world and into all other relationships. In this way He not only calls us but also empowers us to actually become more and more like Him.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3 NIV)
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23 NLT)
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