My Valentine???????

So. Who's *your* Valentine?????

Your hubby?? Your boyfriend/girlfriend??? Jesus??? =)

Ok. So how about "Crabby Grandma and her Grandbabies"? uhhhhhh.

nope. 

uh uh. not at all.

Today at church Mr. Zahm was talking about the heavy burden Paul had for the Children of the Lord, but also for the furtherance of the gospel. How Paul goes through the list of physical trials that he has endured, but then says that his burden of the gospel is even heavier. That he would give up everything for the good of the gospel.

It pretty much hit me over the head then, that that's what love means: having a heavy burden for the world, and the creation of God, that they might hear the gospel that saves; the story of Love. So much so that we cant keep it to ourselves. And it doesn't mean just for out fellow believers, or our fellow believers, or our family, or our friends.

It means Grandma and her Grandbabies. ooofta.

It means passing that love on, because it's such a burden to keep it that we can't! I've been feeling God's overwhelming love toward me, but I'm asking Him to give me an overwhelming burden that I can't keep to my self. But that kind of brings me to another point.... where love isn't a feeling but a choice. =) [later!]

"The LOVE of God // how rich and pure // how measureless and strong.// It shall forevermore endure // the saints' and angels' song."

"Could we with ink the ocean fill // and were the skies of parchment made // were every stalk on earth a quill // and every man a scribe by trade; to write the LOVE of God above // would drain the ocean dry // nor could the scroll contain the whole // though stretched from sky to sky."

~The Love of God, Fredrick M. Lehman, 1917

I Love You

"Death shall not part us // It's you I died for." 

He loves me! Jesus loves ME! He loves me and desires me so much that He gave everything, even His life to be with me. It doesn't matter what I've done, He doesn't care where I've been, nothing I do can change the depth of His love.

"Your My beloved, lover I'm yours // Death shall not part us // It's you I died for // For better or worse // forever we'll be / My love it unites us, and it binds you to Me // It's a mystery." [ Beloved, by Tenth Avenue North]

It seems so simple, like I should have figured it out by now. We've all heard one of the most quoted verses of the Bible, you know the one..... "For God so loved to World, He gave His only begotten son...." But I have a head time accepting it. My sinful, prideful heart tells me that once I'm good enough, once I've changed these things, then I can spend my life with Him. After I've worked through all these things, then maybe I can experience His love.

But He wants me just as I am. He is seeking me out, and nothing I can do (or don't do for that matter) can bind me to Him, only His love can do that. He wants to romance me, to yearn for me, to fight for me, if only I will let Him. I think of the story of Hosea, whose wife keeps running back to her prostitution, who keeps rejecting his love, but yet he continued to seek her out, to love her, to cherish her. If that's a human example of the Lord's love, how much more does he seek us, love us and cherish us. It gives me shivers to try and imagine it! "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [Romans 8:38-39]

And He wants the same for you. He wants to fight for you, to embrace you, to cherish you.

Now.

Just as you are.

Not tomorrow, not years down the road, when you might have things figured out.

Now.

Let him.