Falling in Love All Over Again

Last month, I was able to attend a couple of weddings for some really great friends. I like to listen to the pastor or whomever is marrying the couple and see what challenge there is for me in my marriage. At both occasions, I was definitely challenged on the topic of sacrificial love. Someone I know often says, "We say that we believe in unconditional love until we actually have to do something without any hope of return or favor." If I ever want to look to an example of unconditional, sacrificial love, I, of course, have to look no further than Christ.

What He did for me--for all of us--on the cross was and is the greatest expression of love, submission, devotion, obedience, grace, and mercy that has ever occurred. Indeed, "there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). And this was just while He was on earth.

I am sure of God's love for me. I have endless reassurances from Him that His love will never fail, that it will uphold me, and that nothing can ever separate me from it--even myself. What I doubt...what I'm not so sure of is my love. I am a pretty faithless creature. I have been known to have spiritual amnesia and forget all that has been done for me. My lips say God loves me and He is Lord of my life, but my life often sings another tune. 

When I think back to how God wooed me (yes, "wooed", because He drew me to His side and away from what would compete for my heart), I think about how He allowed me to know Him. As in any new relationship, He slowly revealed one facet after another of Himself at a rate He knew I could handle; however, unlike any other relationship I have been in, He also peeled away the layers of my sinful heart to show me what He had designed it to look like.

The summer after my junior year of high school, I went to a Christian camp. I was a fairly new Christian for the most part, and I think I still had a pretty historical view of God. Yes, I knew that He saved me and He loved me, but beyond that, I felt like I knew Him like I know the president of the United States. In the evenings at camp, we focused on the different names of God from the Old Testament; every night was a different name, and the artistic campers made banners to hang from the ceiling in the chapel with those names on them.

Over the next few weeks, I want to take time to focus on those different names of God. I want to remember how I fell more and more in love with God as I learned the vast depth of Him. I still cannot wrap my head around the sheer vastness of Him! If He is infinitely loving, then He is also infinitely wise, merciful, gracious......and the list goes on and on. 

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