Finding God's Love

“…I have loved thee with an everlasting love….”

Jeremiah 31:3 KJV

God loves you. Can you see His love from where you are?

The autumn day rose in glory of thick, saturated, blue sky, bushy, mostly green trees that shirred in the breeze, and yards scattered with the season’s first fallings. The leaves’ crunchy, brown remnants often lately appeared in my house, carried in on shoes and furry dog feet.

My daughter and I decided to take our work outside. She perched at the porch table with her homework, and I sunk into a camp chair with my notebook. I soaked in the scenery and singsong sounds of chattering birds. I appreciated the reprieve from a morning of phone calls and bill payments.

The bright sun had crested and begun its slow descent on the front side of the house, casting shade over all but a small strip of the back porch. The wind picked up and stayed. A large maple situated between my yard and the neighbor’s waved its broad branches and shimmied its green, papery fringe in front of that bold, blue backdrop that peeped between the gaps in the leaves.

The neighbor’s barn shed in the background stood mostly hidden by the maple and showed enough to give the pleasant appearance of a farm or country living spread, framed from my view by the grassy, leaf spattered yard, the rustling maple, and a thicket of past-season berry vines.

The constant wind became too much for me in my t-shirt and shorts. I got up and moved my camp chair to the edge of the porch, eight or nine feet forward, to sit in the narrow strip of sunshine.

The whole scene changed. Now I could see almost all of the barn shed. The maple’s trunk and lower limbs were more visible now, too, instead of veiled by shrubbery and wild honeysuckles growing alongside the porch. The yard looked different, also, like there was more of it. The maple and barn shed no longer dominated the view. I saw more of the houses up the way and more open sky. My semi-private, country escape transitioned to a backyard community with a nine-foot shift.

I knew it was there, the community, but for a moment from my first position with so much hidden from view, I could almost forget.

Sometimes a small shift forward brings much more into view.

Finding God’s love can be like that.

God’s love for us is constant. Love is the very nature of who God is. 1 John 4:7-8 KJV says, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

Even so, our position and perspective in relation to what we’re looking at (or for) can affect what we see. It could affect how visible to us God’s love for us is…or isn’t.

I like love to be continually reaffirmed. If my family never told me they loved me, I am fairly certain I would start to wonder if or how much they did indeed love me.

In the same way, if God’s love for me was seldom or poorly reaffirmed in my thoughts, I might have the same doubts about His love for me.

Affirming God’s love for us can create the shift we need to better see it. That affirmation threads throughout His Word.

Sometimes it’s given through obvious words and declarations.

“The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3 KJV).

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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 8:35-39 KJV).

“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:22-23 KJV).

We can also discover affirmation of God’s love through stories.

Jesus told the story of the prodigal.

And he said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.

And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry (Luke 15:11-24 KJV).

Consider also the story of Job who lost his children, wealth, and health. Through his great afflictions, he remained faithful to God, a testament against accusations from Satan himself. Job acknowledges his inability to see God amid his devastation but trusts the character of God and points to His watchfulness over him.

Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold (Job 23:8-10 KJV).

Some threads of God’s love in the Bible feel like declarations and stories.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:16-17 KJV).

(That is one of the greatest statements and true stories of God’s love for us of all time!)

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 KJV).

Beautiful words. Beautiful stories. Sometimes painful stories. Threaded with love.

So are our lives.

God’s love for us is constant. Everlasting. Love is who He is.

Can we see it? Can we detect His love speaking over us and moving through our story?

If God’s love seems missing, maybe we could shift our position and perspective. Maybe we could move our chair forward by spending time with God through His Word, prayer, and worship. We bring our thoughts nearer to Him and our desires nearer to His. As we shift, what enters our viewfinder adjusts. We can trust His love is there and keep looking for it until we find it.