Ep. 161 — Anchor Yourself in the Love of God + “The Love of God”
Download the handwritten version of “The Love of God” here.
Download Ep. 161 — Anchor Yourself In the Love of God + ‘The Love of Gods” audio/episode here.
The Love of God.
The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.
Could we with ink the oceans fill and
Were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man ascribed by trade
To write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, those stretched from sky to sky.
The Saints and Angels song.
This morning, K-Love was on when I got in my car. I rarely listened to the radio, but Andrew drove at last, and as I started the engine, The God Who Stays by Matthew West was playing.
It was such a beautiful reminder of the love of God and pushed back against that dull, low-lying sense of unworthiness in my heart. Unworthy? Oh, yes. But does He love me in spite of me? Oh, yes, yes, yes. One million times, yes.
“You're the God Who Stays. You're the one who runs in my direction when the whole world walks away. You're the God Who stands with wide open arms, and you tell me nothing I have ever done can separate my heart from the God Who Stays.”
The bridge goes on to state all the things that can't separate us from God and His love. Now, I disagree with the line that says “my sin can't separate,” because that's what sin in an unrepentant state does. But once it is past, repented of, and forgiven sin, no, it cannot separate.
The bridge reminded me of “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul asks this famous question in Romans 8 and follows it up with a list of possibilities. Shall tribulation: pressure, affliction, distress, straits, or how about distress, dire calamity, extreme affliction, or persecution, or famine, scarcity and hunger, or nakedness, being stripped bare, or peril, danger, or sword?”
“Paul says emphatically, NO, in the middle of all those possible, worst-case scenarios, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. The absolutely most dire set of trials Paul could list are completely, entirely unable to cut off the flow of God's love to his followers. But Paul does not leave it there.
He carries on: I am persuaded. I am fully and entirely convinced that no force of hell or effect of the curse, no enemy of Christ, not one thing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Paul was persuaded.
This wasn't just belief from his Sabbath school lessons as a little boy. This wasn't simply something Ananias had told him about, life had persuaded Paul. He wrote those words (in 57-59 AD) near the end of his third missionary journey.
And experience was the very thing that had convinced him of the unstoppable force of God's love. Paul was persuaded because beatings and imprisonment had not separated him from God's love. Shipwreck and stonings, the memories of his persecution, of those first Christians had not stopped the flow of God's love into his life. The battle of his flesh which made him write, “For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do…” could not separate him from God's love. The “thorn,” the infirmities and weaknesses that Paul felt so keenly had not been able to separate him from God's love. Three years alone in the wilderness, the betrayal and the departure of travel companions, none of these had been able to separate him from the deep unending flow of God's love into his life and heart.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love.
“Neither death, nor life, neither angels, nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below, indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39–NLT)
And I echo the words of Paul, no thing can separate us from the love of Christ. I am persuaded; I am convinced. Every time I've thought, “Well, now he'll certainly stop loving me, now he'll see that I'm a lost cause,” He's stayed. He's still been there. Every time I've thought the night was too dark or the road was too long and somehow I'd lost Him on the journey, I've looked up and seen His smile and felt His embrace. It's stunned me, it's shocked me, because it's so cut against the grain of my expectations and my human understanding of love. Every time a deep sense of unworthiness or the dullness of dry seasons has led me to believe that this will be the thing that finally proves I'm not spiritual enough for Him to love me, He's been there. He loves still, He loves yet. The force and tenacity of his love is unstopped by human weakness or life seasons. His love is unabated by the lies of the enemy in flesh.
I am persuaded. Not just because I've sang the song, Yes, Jesus Loves Me since I was a little girl, but because I've lived it. I've experienced His love, not based on me, but placed on me. A love that doesn't exist because of my perfection, but because of His, because He is love.
This is not love that affirms and approves and allows me to stay where I am, but love that compels me to “go on into perfection.” This is love that challenges me to grow at a natural progression, just as a parent challenges and expects a child to grow and learn and mature. This is love that scrapes me up off the ground after stumbles and falls, requiring of me humility to get up and get going again. This is love that stays long after everyone else has walked away. This is love unexplainable and indescribable with human ability or oratory. This is love undaunted and undefeated and unending.
In the face of the previously mentioned “low grade unworthiness,” I choose to declare and glory in the love of God: unearned, unmerited, undeserved, but true and real and deep nonetheless. Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself.”
You're the God who stays.
And though the ocean isn't filled with ink, my pen is, and I'm going to keep using it to write about your love, your mercy, your grace, your goodness, your faithfulness, your forgiveness, your salvation, your word. And one day, when I see you face-to-face, I’ll know how feeble these efforts were and how truly unbelievable and indescribable your love really is.
Thank you for joining me for this journey!
Go grab your Bible and your journal!
I look forward to the power of this habit in your life. This is Unedited.