Love Conquers All

Do you know that God is for you?  No, really, do you know that nothing that you could do will ever keep God from being on your side? His love is beyond measuring and beyond understanding. Perhaps you have heard that God is love and that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that we might possess eternal life.  He loves us so much that He actually wants to spend an eternity with us!  Do you love anyone that much that you would want to spend every minute of eternity with them?  Well, God loves you that much.  The problem is many of us don’t really believe that God loves us. We think that we have crossed the line and are beyond saving.

I remember my earthly father’s struggle with love.  He was fun loving, hard working, and courageous in many ways. He loved to listen and to dance to music. It must be where I get my love for music and dancing. He never met a stranger.  My mom would send him on an errand to get a couple of items at the grocery store, but he would tend to get sidetracked as he got involved in conversations over the produce or in the parking lot with complete strangers.   Where was the struggle you may be asking?  The struggle was not with what or whom he loved but it was with receiving love from others and from God.  That must be where I get that. 

I remember talking with my dad and asking him many times if he had received Christ.  He would always answer yes, but then add, “He could never forgive my sin.”  You see, I believe it was that inability to receive the Father’s love that kept my earthly father bound up in feelings of worthlessness, anger, and addiction.  By the time I was in middle school my dad had turned to alcohol for comfort and was a full- fledged alcoholic. He wasn’t the same fun-loving man I knew as a young child. My dad was brave, as well. I will never forget as a young girl, watching him chase a huge bull around the pasture behind our home.  He wasn’t afraid of that huge animal, yet he had become a man bound up in fear of never being good enough. Where was his bravery now? 

My dad lived most of his life like he was walking a tight rope stretched across the downtown skyscrapers.  He lived in fear that he would fall and that all his efforts would never be good enough.  He was partly correct.  We will never be good enough to earn God’s love.  Now picture the tight rope just inches above a huge, sturdy safety net.  If you slip and fall you won’t be hurt, because your fall will be short and soft.  That is God’s love. His love is always there ready to catch us when we fall.  Nothing to fear, because there is no step we can take that is out of the reach of His love. 

One Sunday morning in a church in Missouri I prayed that God would do whatever it took to open the eyes and heart of my dad to see and accept His love.  Only a few months later, I received a call from my mom informing me that my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  My mind went to that Sunday morning plea for my dad’s salvation.  Could this be His answer?  I would never pray for anyone to be diagnosed with cancer!  That was not what I prayed. I prayed, “Lord, whatever it takes.”  Within a few weeks after his diagnosis, my dad started going to church. He quit drinking and within days was convinced of God’s love in the midst of his suffering the effects of alcohol withdrawal and cancer treatments.  God’s love had overcome my dad’s fears and feelings of unworthiness.  He was radically saved and his life was a living testimony of what God’s love can overcome.  After he was baptized you couldn’t keep him from sharing his faith.  My mom called one day to tell me some amazing news.  She and my dad had been to visit a friend who was also suffering with cancer.  As they were preparing to leave their friends bedside, my dad asked the friend if he could pray for him.  He proceeded to pray aloud for his friend.  My mom said she just about fainted!  That was the first time in their 43 years of marriage that he had ever prayed aloud with her. My dad had not only been convinced of God’s overcoming love, but he had come to realize that even cancer could not separate him from God’s amazing love. 

If you are struggling today to accept, or be convinced of, God’s love for you take the plunge! Jump off the tight rope of trying to earn God’s love and fall into the arms of the One who loves unconditionally and eternally. May your statement of belief be that of Paul’s in Romans 8:38, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing (not even yourself!), will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   

In the love conquering Name of Jesus!

Nancy