Love Magnified

God loves you. I am sure you’ve heard that many times. Perhaps while you were wandering around a mall, someone came up and shared a message about God’s love for you. Maybe you heard it at a church service, or maybe you heard it during a time of grief or loss. Either way, we have all been told that God loves us. Especially at a time of loss, the truth of that statement may not have resonated with you. Perhaps you heard it and kept moving, or maybe you paused and filed it away for another time. Whatever your response, the truth of that statement never changes. God loves you: today, tomorrow, always.
As you begin these days of study and devotion, be forewarned: it is my intent that at the end you will have developed a special sense of His love for you. I pray that you will be overwhelmed by His love and all that He has done to prove His love for you. I pray that after you finish these days of devotion, whenever you pick up your Bible, you will be especially sensitive to the fact that from Genesis to Revelations, the Holy Bible is truly one big love letter to you from God. May you know unquestionably His heart for you.
This truth about God’s love for you comes with a question: How will you respond to His love? Your response will not dampen His love. His love is above and beyond what we experience with people. It is unconditional, unquenchable and never failing. Your response, however, will determine whether you are able to experience the joy of His unconditional, unquenchable love. Your response will determine whether you will be able to share His love with others.
You will see, hear and experience God’s love most when you are still. The noise and activity of our world jangles our nerves and causes us to react to the urgent, but not the important. His love is important. It is important to the proper functioning of our Spirit. We are told in scripture that “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). His Spirit, connecting with us at times when we are open to hearing His voice, quiets us and allows us to be enveloped with His presence and experience the power of His love and care.
On some level, I question the audacity of writing about God’s love because it is so much bigger than anything we can imagine with our finite minds. But, in our diseased world, we very much need a reminder that there is one place that remains unchanging, because it is inhabited by the God who is unchanging and dares to love us in spite of ourselves and in spite of where we have taken the world that He created for us.
His love follows us every day. All day long He seeks us. On the surface His love may look like the blundering love of a lovesick teen, unrequited but ever faithful. However, when we tear apart the rose and examine it in detail, we will be blown away by the fact that all day long we are followed around by the love of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, ever present God who yearns for us to acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior in what may seem to us like the most insignificant details of our lives.
We have become used to love stories that can be captured in a two-hour segment on television or at the movies. God’s love story cannot be captured and dismissed so easily. It begins, for our capacities, in Genesis - although for God, it started before the foundation of the world. For those who choose to know Him, this love story has no end. This love story is an ongoing epic that transcends this life and takes us into eternity with Him. We cannot imagine a love so great that it knows no bounds, has no end.
From Genesis to Revelation, we are given glimpses of this great love – this love He has for you and me. I invite you to share the true stories of His love through the pages of His word, the Holy Bible. Meet some of the people who were changed by His love and came to know Him so that you too may walk with Him and experience the most powerful love known to man – the love that will transform you from the inside out.
I’d like for you to be intentional about this study. Decide now to finish each day, even if you need to devote extra time to get it done. Let these days of devotion reach down into your heart. Pay attention to the learning outcomes for each section. Grab a pencil and spend some time each day answering the questions and journaling and meditating about what the Holy Spirit brings to mind. For these days, allow the importance of God’s words to speak louder than the urgent matters at hand.
Let’s start at the beginning …