Choose Love (3 page)

Prayer of Love

L
ORD
, help me to see myself the way You see me. Thank You that You see me through Your eyes of love and all You created me to be. Enable me to open up my heart to receive Your love. Although it’s hard to comprehend a love so great, and I don’t feel worthy of it, I don’t want to shut myself off from the power of Your amazing love working in my heart. Teach me about the ways You love me that I’m not understanding. Give me eyes to see how You reveal Your love for me by keeping me from things that are not Your greatest good for my life. I know that everything You want to do in my life cannot be accomplished without Your love flowing in me.

Help me turn my gaze from myself to You. I want to see You more clearly and understand You more fully. Thank You that You not only love me, but You will enable me to understand the depth of Your love. Show me the ways I don’t recognize or open up to Your love—whether because of serious doubt or simply a lack of understanding—and I have missed many of Your blessings because of it.

Enable me to see my life from Your perspective. Instead of looking through a magnifying lens to see the flaws in myself, help me to see through the magnifying lens of Your loving heart to observe the good—and potential for greatness—you have put in me. May Your presence be magnified in my life beyond what I can even imagine now. Cause Your perfection, beauty, love, and holiness to be reflected in me at all times.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Words of Love

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!

How great is the sum of them!

If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
when I awake, I am still with You.

P
SALM
139:17-18

L
ORD
, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?

Or the son of man, that You are mindful of him?

Man is like a breath; His days are like a passing shadow.

P
SALM
144:3-4

Does He not see my ways, and count all my steps?

J
OB
31:4

His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness…by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

2 P
ETER
1:3-4

2

Understand Who God Really Is

N
othing is more important in our lives than love. We all
need it
. We all
want it.
We
cannot live without it
. We
demand it
of others. We do desperate and crazy things for it. We reject those who won’t extend it. When we are rejected by the object of our love, that touches a deep, dark, empty, dangerous place within us. Without love we can sink to the lowest pit of depression, anger, bitterness, self-hatred, and hopelessness.

Those who don’t think they need love in a desperate way haven’t really known life without it
.

The
L
word is the obsession of every songwriter and poet, every romantic letter writer and novelist, every young and idealistic heart, and every abandoned or rejected boy or girl, man or woman.

The need for love is not restricted by gender, age, level of mental or physical health, financial circumstances, or education. We don’t age out of our need for love; we just learn as we go along how to cover it better. We don’t educate ourselves out of our need for love; we just learn to express it in a way that is less frightening to others. And we may have the best friends money can buy and be talked into thinking their love is the real deal, but if their love runs out when the money runs out, then we weren’t the true object of their love after all.

Sometimes people may love us but don’t show it in a perceivable way, so we don’t feel it and therefore don’t believe we’re loved at all. And when we
feel
we are unloved, we may be able to cover up the inner devastation of unmet needs, but we still suffer silently. We may actually be loved, but because we don’t believe we are, then being unloved is our reality.

The problem with human love is that it’s fragile and weak and fraught with failure. Human love is limited. It’s changeable. It can be selfishly motivated and manipulating. It’s conditional and undependable. Yet we wither and die without it. Some people will take anything—no matter how meager the emotional crumbs are that fall under the table of what resembles some kind of love—rather than have nothing. We are all ecstatic when we feel love and miserable when we don’t.

Many of us suffer because we think that if people don’t really love us, then we will have to live forever without love. But it’s not true. The greatest sense of love, which is available for us at all times, is God’s love. His love is not like human love. God’s love is unchanging and unfailing. That’s because
He
is unchanging and unfailing. His love is unconditional. Too many of us don’t understand the feast of His love waiting for us in the banquet hall of His favor.

I’m not saying we don’t need human love. We certainly do, but human love has limits. God’s love does not. If we think we can put all our hopes in human love, we are setting ourselves up for deep disappointment. Only God’s love is fully healing, restoring, rejuvenating, and life-giving. Human love can only provide a small fraction of that, and only for so long before it becomes selfish again.

Only God’s love strengthens and fortifies us like nothing else can. Only God’s love can totally fill the need to be loved. Only God’s love
in
us can cause us to love others without fail. We cannot live without God’s love, but often people don’t know it’s
His
love they need. And that’s because they don’t know
Him.
Even if they believe He exists but have not opened up to
receive
all He
has
for them, they don’t begin to comprehend the depth of His love for them.

The truth is, God loves you more than any human ever could—beyond what you can even fathom. And if you have felt unloved in your past—if love was withheld from you in your childhood or if you have been rejected in some way—you will have a harder time receiving love from God. That’s because you have learned to not trust love, no matter who the source is. In order to know the depth of God’s
love
, you need to know
God
.

And that’s the problem.

Many people don’t really know God, so they don’t know His love. They know what good, bad, or erroneous things people have told them
about
God, but they don’t know
Him
. And I am talking about some of the many who believe in Him as well as those who doubt Him. Understanding God’s love for us is a never-ending quest that will not be fully realized until we are with Him in heaven.

In order to know God and receive His love, we need to understand who He is and how great His love is for us. We need to comprehend it at least somewhat before we can feel it. What some may believe is God’s judgment on them could actually be His love shown in ways they don’t yet understand. Many of us don’t realize how He protects us from dangers we don’t even recognize are there. As your knowledge of God grows, so will your faith in Him. As your understanding of God’s nature expands, so will your love for Him.

Knowing God’s eternal nature is important because the depth of your faith in Him is reflected in the size of God in your heart and your understanding
.

Some Things You Must Know About God

In order to understand God’s love, you need to understand who He is. Sometimes we think we know who God is, but if we ever doubt His love for us, then we don’t really know Him. What follows are some basic things you need to know about God.

God was not created
. He has always been. He has always existed and will always exist (Psalm 90:1-2). That means everything about
Him is forever. It’s eternal. That means His love for you is forever and will always exist.

God is the all-knowing Creator of all things
. That means He knows everything about you. He knew the moment of your conception, and He had a plan and purpose for your life from the beginning. God did not necessarily determine the circumstances of your conception. That was decided by the free will of at least one of your birth parents. But if those circumstances were less than desirable, that doesn’t make you a mistake or less than desirable. You may have been a surprise to your parents, but you were never a surprise to God. You were born with God’s plan for your salvation, restoration, redemption, and future already in place. That doesn’t mean it was all predestined. It still requires a choice from you. He has been drawing you to Himself since you were born, but you still have to receive Him. No matter what has happened in your past, God has been extending His hand to you, waiting for you to open your heart to Him.

God can touch and transform anyone with His love
. No one is so far gone that God cannot redeem and bring to triumph that person when the heart is open to receive His love. There is no pit we can sink into that God does not reach in and pull us out of when we look up to Him. And when we submit our own will to His and seek His presence and help, He opens our spiritual eyes to see more of who He really is.

You must also know that God is one God
. But there are three distinct, eternal, coexistent persons in the Godhead.

There is God the Father, who was not created but has always been.

There is Jesus, who is God’s Son and also God. He, too, was not created but was begotten by His Father God.

There is also the Holy Spirit, who
proceeds from
God and is God’s Spirit and also God.

In the beginning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were together
at creation. And when they created man, God said, “Let
Us
make man in
Our
image, according to
Our
likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

Who is “
Us
”?

“Us” refers to these three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are separate and distinct but are also inseparable. And they are as active in your life as you welcome them to be. In order to know God, you have to know each of these three persons of the Trinity. To leave out one is to have an incomplete picture of God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Any lopsided view will limit all God can do in your life.

Our image of who God is shapes the way we respond to Him. For many people, their image of God comes from their experience. It is formed by what they have seen in other believers, or what they learned in church, or what the people who were most influential in their lives taught them. If they were disappointed in people who were supposed to be God’s people, then they put that disappointment on God. They blame God for the abuse they received from those who were supposed to love and protect them and did not.

People also tend to view God the way they viewed their father, or father figure, in their life. If that was not a positive image for them, then they may also put that human failure on God. For example, if your father abandoned you in any way, you may feel that your heavenly Father has or will also abandon you too, and therefore you cannot trust Him. If your earthly father was never there for you, you may feel that your heavenly Father won’t be there for you either. If your human father was distant, you may feel your heavenly Father is distant as well.

If you have rejected God for whatever reason, or have hesitated to open up to Him and receive His healing and restoring love, please know that He is not angry with you. He knows that it takes knowing Him and His unconditional love for you before you can gain total trust in Him. But He wants you to do that as soon as possible. That’s because the sooner you open up to fully receiving His love,
the sooner you can receive all He has for you—which is far more than you can imagine. Even if you have known God for years, there is always more to learn about Him.

Some people think it takes mindless faith to believe in God, but it actually takes blind and reckless faith to look at this beautiful world and amazing universe and believe there is
no
God.

King David, a man after God’s own heart, said that only a fool says “there is no God.” He said these kinds of people become corrupt and “there is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1). That’s because if there is no God, then there are no absolutes, no moral law, and no final restriction on behavior. They can make up their own law and change it whenever they want. They are definitely not motivated by love.