Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:7-10
English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon told of a minister walking in the countryside who stopped at a farmhouse to ask for a drink of water. As he drank, he talked with the farmer about the weather vane spinning in the wind on top of the barn. Stamped onto the weather vane were the words, “GOD IS LOVE.” “I don’t think that is a good way to present God,” the minister objected. “It’s saying that God’s love is fickle, turning whichever way the wind blows.” “No”, the farmer replied, “the weather vane declares that God is love whichever way the wind blows!”
As a young believer, I had imagined God’s love for me as fickle. I thought His love contingent on me, on how I was doing, on how I was feeling, on whichever way the wind was blowing. I played the old game of plucking petals from a flower, saying, “God loves me, God loves me not…” That’s how I lived. It proved to be a precarious foundation for life.
How freeing it is to just take God at His Word, to simply believe what Scripture says: “God is love.” To say “God is love” is not just a description of one of God’s attributes. Rather, God cannot help but love me because love is God’s very essence, His nature, His being. God has nothing to gain, so that every act of God is an act of love, seeking the highest good for the other.
God loves me and cannot stop loving me any more than He can stop being all-powerful or all-wise. God is love on my bad days and on my good days. Whatever way the winds of life blow I can know that God loves me: Thankfully, God’s love is beyond my control! God will never love me anymore than He loves me in this moment. The weather vane says it right: “GOD IS LOVE.” This I know!
PLANT A THOUGHT… Repeat, Tell, Write, Create
A Fellow Traveler,
Tim
