אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם everlasting love
“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself.”
Jeremiah 31:3 (NLT)
We love Him because He first loved us
1 John 4:19 (NKJV)
Think back as far as you can. Do you remember when you first sensed the love of God for yourself?
I do. It may surprise you to know that I didn’t sense His love even on the day that I gave Jesus my heart. I was an eight-year-old child.
I just knew that I was a sinner in need of forgiveness. On that day, I began to grow in my new salvation—painfully, slowly.
I first sensed God’s true love for me in high school, which was a difficult time in my life. I felt sad and alone, but one day while walking to class, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that the Spirit of God was right there. He didn’t speak audibly; I simply leaned into the inner voice in my heart.
I would like to tell you that the pain went away, and I have lived happily ever since.
That isn’t the way God works. We live in a world full of sin, including my own. But God takes shattered lives and glues them back together with His tender grace. He transforms broken hearts into testimonies of living hope.
I bet you have a story to tell, too. If you don’t have a story of the nearness of God, could it be that you
- are stuck in a sinful lifestyle
- are deeply affected by someone else’s sin
- have never truly given your heart to Him.
God’s love can touch each of those dilemmas.
God’s love is mighty, unconditional; it’s personal, and it is miraculous.
One of the most misunderstood stories of God’s love is the love that He has had for the Hebrew people.
Take a look at this.
“The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations!
Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.”
Deuteronomy 7:7-9 (NLT)
It tells me of a Savior’s love,
Who died to set me free.
It tells me of His precious blood,
The sinner’s perfect plea.
O how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me!1
God knew the end of the story before life on earth started. He often works differently from our expectations. He selected a small nation to fulfill His plan. This plan was to create a lineage for Jesus’ birth. He could have chosen any nation, but He chose Israel.
God chose the nation with the fewest people to establish His covenant and share the story of redemption with every nation.
Israel is positioned amid pagan nations so they can witness God’s power, might, love, and mercy, all through His Son.
For the most part, Israel rejected God. However, God’s purpose to bring Jesus through the tribe of Judah has been fulfilled. No part of God’s plan has failed.
All of this is because of God’s love.
What great sadness that most people never know God’s love. These are the people who will not accept the love of God, and they really cannot love other people in the truest sense of the word—Hesed.2
Now here’s a challenge for you, regardless of your belief in God. Below is a proof text. This is evidence of God’s love that is either in your heart or reveals the true condition of your heart if you don’t believe.
This is in bulleted format so that you can take it in, intentionally, one step at a time.
- Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God.
- Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.
- But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
- God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.
- This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
- Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.
- No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
- And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.
- Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
- All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.
- We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
- God is love,
- and all who live in love live in God,
- and God lives in them.
- And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So, we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
- Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.
- If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment,
- and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
- We love each other because he loved us first.
- If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar;
- for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?
- And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Getting the Seed out of the basket and into hungry hearts. Matthew 13 