Over the past years of my life, I’ve found myself more and more wanting to understand what God’s love really is. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading and here are a couple thoughts I’ve had. Take a read:

1.) Love isn’t just a feeling. In our culture we think of love as something you feel—more or less feeling good about someone. If God’s love for us was just Him feeling good about us, it would be nice, but it wouldn’t really be life-changing. I feel good about a lot of people and things and it usually doesn’t result in anything other than a smile here and there. But, that’s not what love is. Yeah, love involves feelings for sure, but love is way more than that. True love is a decision and commitment to put someone else’s interests above your own. It’s acting to benefit another above one’s self.

Love understood in this light is profoundly different! God does not just feel good about us, God actively seeks out our best interests. If you haven’t thought about that before, take a second to let it sink in. The Almighty God takes real action to help you and bring about good in your life. You might not see the good and you might not see all your circumstances as good, but it’s there and it’s true.

2.) God’s love for us affects His emotions. Love isn’t a feeling, but it does involve feelings. This is pretty cool to me, in fact, a realization of this is what is prompting my writing today. Check this out:

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

God isn’t just some stoic, uninvolved power force. I want to unpack this verse for a second. Look at it by line:

1. The LORD your God is in your midst – This means that He is near to us. He’s not far off and uninvolved, but rather He is close and he cares.
2. [God is] a mighty one who will save – God is mighty to save and He, in His love, has saved us. We have this problem of sin—we think we’re better than God and that we don’t need him. Sin, though, destroys us because good can only come from God. God hates sin because he loves us so much that he hates seeing us be destroyed and missing out on good. God sent his Son, Jesus, to die that He might rescue us from the consequences of our sin, and bring us back into right relationship with Him. That’s intense love.
3. [God] will rejoice over you with gladness – God rejoices over us; in His proactive love, He is excited and full of joy. He doesn’t resent us, He’s not disappointed in us. Rather, He is glad that He made us and that we are His creation.
4. [God] will quiet you by his love – I have to read into this a little bit, but saying that “He will quiet you” implies there’s anguish and maybe some hurt. God longs to bring us peace and comfort through his love. Incidentally, this also alludes to how deeply He cares about us and our circumstances.
5. [God] will exult over you with loud singing – Have you ever heard some really good news (like a favorite sports team victory, a great job offer, etc.) and just started shouting for joy? I know I have. That is how God feels about us every single day. He’s that excited. Sounds crazy? I think it does, but when you love someone, you do crazy things… and God loves someone… everyone, actually.

To me the notion that God gets excited or that He shouts for joy is pretty crazy. But, I know that I feel things, and I get excited, and I shout for joy. Maybe we feel those things because God feels those things. And maybe, too, God gave us those emotions so that we would better understand Him and how He feels about us. Think about it.

God cares about us deeply; He proactively works to bring about good for us; and He shouts with joy over us because His love for us is so intense that it fills Him with excitement. That is what it means when people say, “God loves you.” :)

Matthew 5:44-45

“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! ⁴⁵In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”

I really love nature and I have long told people that my two favorite things are the sun and water. Something about the light of the sun, just really lifts my spirit, invigorates my body, and makes me want to live. Because of this, I have often praised God just for showing me his love by blessing my days with sunlight.

The thing that struck me newly today as I read these verses, was how God does, in fact, bless us with sun and rain. The crazy thing, though, is how as be blesses he doesn’t discriminate. Those who hate Him and those who love Him both get to experience His goodness. I am so thankful for this because it reminds me of His character: God is such loving, gracious, and merciful God—even to those who might not want His blessing and good.

This truth about God’s character has significant implications for the way followers of Christ should live. If God is merciful to those who hate him, what ought we to do? If God perseveres in giving grace to apathetic hearts, how should we interact with people who are such?

Be thankful today for God’s blessings and next time you see the sun shining or rain falling, remember that it’s shining/falling for the righteous and unrighteous alike. Praise God for giving good to those who don’t deserve it—yourself included! :)

As I heard the words to this song, I guess, I was really touched. This is totally the attitude and motivation I have sometimes and want to have all the time.

Take a listen. Song: “Loving a Person”

1 John 4:10

This is part of the big prayer Jesus prayed in John 17 before he was betrayed, arrested, and eventually crucified. As someone who has grown up in Christendom and who has been at church and stuff my whole life, I guess I would have expected Jesus to pray for something else.

I guess I believe that one of the most important things for Christians to do is reach out to those who don’t know Jesus. After all, God loves us and wants to be with us, but we’re separated from Him by our sin and condemned to eternity apart from Him if we do not know Christ as Savior. This is completely true, I believe. I think I would expect Jesus to pray, “Help my followers to be really faithful witnesses, dynamic communicators, and passionate about the Lost.”

Instead, he asks the Father to make us Christians unified as he is unified with God. (That’s intense unity, by the way.) I put one verse as the verse of the day, but throughout this prayer, Jesus continually asks God in various ways to help us to be unified. It really appears to be the primary thing that was on His heart at the time.

So, briefly, what does that mean to us? I guess, a lot of things. To me, though, I was pretty convicted about one thing when I read this. I like to be funny. A lot of times, being funny, for me, involves a level of sarcasm. While I don’t want to say all sarcasm is wrong (it may be, but I don’t want to say it :)), I really wonder how it affects the unity that our Lord Jesus Christ is so passionate about.

I live with someone with whom most of my conversation is pretty insincere. We joke around a lot and most of the time it is sarcastic. While I like the guy, I don’t really feel super close to him and I don’t feel super unified with him because we rarely have real, heart-felt, genuine conversation. Thinking about how that relationship has been affected by my lack of seriousness and especially by my consistent sarcasm, has really got me wanting to change.

I think in summing Ephesians 4:3 puts it well: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” What does every effort mean? Well, no holds barred.

I read this passage this morning and I was really taken by it. I remember learning John 11:35 as a child and really enjoying how it was the shortest verse in the Bible or something like that. Because of my familiarity with the verse, I haven’t always given it a lot of thought.

Today, though, when I read it things were different. In context, a friend of Jesus’ died, Lazarus. His sisters, before his death, asked Jesus to come heal him. Jesus didn’t come immediately and he died. When Jesus does come, Martha (one of the sisters) comes to Jesus expresses her sorrow that her brother died and that Jesus wasn’t there.

Jesus tells her, though, that her brother will “rise again”. This is all before he arrives at the grave. So, going into this situation, Jesus, Martha, and Mary know that Lazarus is going to come back to life.

And herein lies what really hit me, Jesus, despite his knowledge of what will happen, still weeps with the people who are mourning Lazarus’ death. To me this just seems like such a huge expression of love and compassion. Even though Jesus knows that, in some ways, what they are going through is temporary and maybe not really significant (in light of his knowledge), he still loves them enough to meet them where they are at—in sorrow. Verse 36 indicates that Jesus’ love was very apparent.

After reading this verse this morning I am just really humbled and excited that I serve such a gracious and loving God. He has raised us all up to life, if we’ll accept His gift, then beyond that he loves us enough to simply meet us where we are at. Whether we’re in joy or sorrow, he is there right along with us; even though he knows enough (he knows all things work together for his good! Rom 8:28) to never necessarily need to feel with us, he does because he loves us.

I love Jesus!

I really love this verse! Here are a couple things I like (there are more, but here are two):

• From God’s “glorious riches” he strengthens us with power through his spirit in us. God’s glorious riches are great (Look at creation!). The power he can provide for us, is also very great. He provides it to us from within. This pumps me up because inner strength seems to be much more helpful than outer strength.
• God’s love is so big it takes power to grasp how big it is. Even though I don’t always understand how big it is, knowing that it is far bigger than I can grasp is pretty sweet.

Today as I was reading in the word, I came across this passage in Psalms that is a really great servant’s prayer:

Pslam 90:16-17
¹⁶Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
¹⁷Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!