I attend
Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) on Monday nights.
It’s an intensive Bible study that requires quite a bit of
homework. This year, we’ve been working
through the book of Revelation, which tells about the end times – heaven, hell,
and God’s judgment and renewal of earth.
Tonight’s discussion and lecture stirred strong feelings, which prompted
this post.
Imagine
your friend told you she was dating a new guy.
He’s
handsome, has similar interests, likes dogs - the usual list of good stuff.
Then, what
if she told you that he is forcing her to be in relationship with him?
That she’s
not sure if she loves him or not, but if she tries to get away, he’ll come
after her and make her stay?
Sounds
abusive to me.
That’s
because forced love isn’t true love.
God doesn’t
force us to love Him.
It’s a
choice.
Day after
day, He reveals who He is to me and all of humanity,
And lets
us accept or reject His love.
I had been
suffering with intense anxiety for years. Life got so bad that I gave up. I wanted to die.
Some
pastors prayed for me and got the word “allergy”, which led me to get tested
and diagnosed with celiac disease. Within
one week of changing my diet, my symptoms lifted.
That was God's “I love you.”
I’d always
wanted to teach teachers in Africa. With
how sick I was, I couldn’t have imagined getting on a plane. My dad told me to write a letter to myself to
open in six months, just to remind myself that things would change. Africa wasn’t on my radar, but by the time six
months was over, I was set to go to Uganda to teach. I opened that letter on the plane. God had healed my panic attacks to the point
that I wasn’t afraid to go.
That was God's “I love you.”
I was in a
very dysfunctional relationship and didn’t even want to get out of it. It ended with me writing an impulsive
text. Later, I wrote in my journal, “God,
please make me a wife and a mother somewhere quiet and beautiful.”
Now I live
in Yakima among flowering orchards and beautiful mountains with my incredible
husband and baby son. I could never have
imagined a life so good.
That’s God's “I love you.”
Years
before I went to Uganda, I was praying and writing down what God was having me
pray. I thought He told me to pray for
someone named Peace. Even though I didn’t
know it as a name from experience, I was sure it was a woman’s name and she
needed prayer. When I actually went to
Uganda, I was drinking tea in a family’s hut only to learn that my hostess’s
name was Peace. I told her I had prayed
for her before I knew her because God knew her and told me she needed it.
Recently,
at the grocery store, I felt God ask me to pray for the cashier. I asked her if she needed prayer and she told
me in tears that her brother had just died.
So many
times, we think things are coincidences, when it’s God revealing His love to
us.
He is
saying, again and again,
“I’m here,
I’m real, and I love you.”
I’m also
learning that God’s love doesn’t mean I don’t hurt or see crap in the world.
Things are
always happening to me and around me that I don’t like at all.
Lots of
people work for the good and yet people still die and tragedies still happen.
I can’t
believe the horrific things that happen every day.
Here’s my
hope though:
I know that
God is not going to let evil win in the end.
It all
matters.
I am accountable
for everything I do on earth.
All of us
are.
God allows
faith in Jesus’ death to set us free from eternal suffering.
That’s His
“I love you.”
Eternity
isn’t wishy washy – it’s life with God’s love or death without.
And I decided
I’m going to choose Him.
Today,
Jesus, I choose your love.
I don’t
need forcing, debating, or marketing.
I don’t
need more time to decide.
I want
life with You now,
I want love
with You forever.
I choose You
and Your love.
Ephesians
3:16-19 says “ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may
strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and
established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp
how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may
be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
This passage is my prayer for you today.
May you accept God,
Not out of fear or force,
But out of a deep revelation of His love for you.
