{Truth Reminders} Whose I Am #3

I Am...

Loved

 photo credit

Thus says, the Lord: "The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away. 

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."

(Jeremiah 31:2-3) 

When my husband and I began dating, I had only recently been heartbroken by a long relationship.  I had often watched my friends in middle school and high school pairing off and wondered when it would be my turn.  I had even wondered if I would ever be loved...or if I was simply unlovable or unworthy of love.  But my senior year of high school I met a boy who held my heart for the next three and a half years. 

Every time he whispered "I love you", I imagined our happily ever after and was convinced that he was the one.  We had even begun talking about getting married...until the day he broke my heart.  I spent that summer before my senior year of college completely and totally devastated, feeling lost and alone and vulnerable...wondering what love was if it only left me empty and broken.

I learned that summer to cling to Christ, remembering that His love was the only love that never failed and falling in love with Him through His words and the prayers and encouragement of some dear friends.  I began to let go of my carefully laid out plans to lean on Him and trust in His good and perfect plans for my life. 

And then I met the man who would become my husband.  I began to fall in love again, but I also wanted desperately to guard my heart, afraid I would be let down once again.  I wondered what a love that lasts til death do us part was really like...and if I was really worth that kind of love.  I would pull him in...only to push him away as the fear of a still wounded heart threatened to take over. 

We had been dating a year when he told me he didn't love me.  I was furious...mostly because it was my biggest fear: that I would never be loved.  Once I let my emotions cool down and prayed for God's wisdom and guidance, I listened as he explained that love was a choice to put the other person first and to be willing to love like Christ loved the church.  He knew that love was not some fairy tale happily ever after, but a deep and abiding commitment.  And he wanted to be sure he was ready to make that choice before he spoke those three words to me.

But, the thing is...even the deep and abiding commitment of marriage is not perfect and it will never fully satisfy our deepest longing to be loved.  We both have our faults and drive each other crazy.  We fight and argue and let each other down.  No matter how hard we each try, we cannot offer each other the kind of love our souls crave.  That kind of love - a love that is unfailing and steadfast - can only come from God, because He is the only one who will never disappoint and never let go. 

Jeremiah 31:2-3 was written for the people of Israel who had endured the "sword" of Pharaoh as he cut off all male children at birth and threatened to cut them off at the Red Sea.  They had wandered in the wilderness and in a strange land.  Yet, through all these hardships and no matter how many times Israel turned its back on God, He did not give up or forget them.  Matthew Henry says that God showed them "His peculiar favor" in a love that is steadfast and enduring. 

The same promise is ours through Christ.  No matter how many storms we endure or how often we too wander in the wilderness, His love remains.  His love is not only an ancient love, spoken to the Jews as His chosen people, but an everlasting love that is constant and never changes.  Charles Spurgeon explains this love so beautifully, when he writes about the confidence had by great men and women of faith:

"They did not speak of Christ's love as though it were a myth to be respected, a tradition to be revered; they viewed it as a blessed reality, and they cast their whole confidence in it, being persuaded that it would bear them up as upon eagle's wings and carry them all their days; resting assured that it would be to them a foundation of rock, against which the waves might beat, and the winds blow, but their soul's habitation would stand securely if founded upon it."

Romans 8:38-39 further explains that there really is nothing, not even death, that can separate us from His love.  Why?  Because Christ is the ground of the steadfastness of His love and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  He is both unchanging and unfailing.  

Another commentary shared the story of Mr. Hugh Kennedy, a respected and revered Christian man who, on his death bed, called for a bible to be opened to these words from Romans 8:38 - "I am persuaded that neither death nor life".  He held his finger pointed at these words and told his children, just before breathing his last, 

"Now, God be with you, my children; I have breakfasted with you and shall sup with my Lord Jesus Christ this night."  

Behold, what manner of love is this, to claim His love for us with such confidence!  That is what it means to be really, truly, and completely loved. 

Join me on Mondays on a journey to discover and take hold of the truth of who we are in Him.