An Everlasting Love

February 14, 2012

Valentine’s Day hits us all differently depending on our season in life. I have experienceda plethora of feelings over the years and perhaps you have too.

 When I was young, Valentine’s Day was a blast!! I enjoyed cutting out those countless hearts, designing my own valentines mailbox, where I anticipated receiving cards and candy at my class party. The regular curriculum of Elementary school was replaced with a party of  friends, fun, and lots of sugar. What’s not to love, right?

 As I grew older, Valentine’s Day was a reminder that I wasn’t chosen. I truly felt unlovely and less than the others because I wasn’t among the lucky girls who would get the flowers delivered from a secret (or not-so-secret) admirer. Then, there were years of beautiful bouquets and special dates and feeling accepted and beautiful. Both ends of this emotional spectrum reveal a part of my heart that was sick. Certainly the desire to feel beautiful is natural and not wrong in and of itself. However my sense of acceptance, my worth, my identity was rooted too much in what or who I had or didn’t have in my life, and what they thought about me.

 Certainly emotions are part of our being human, but the filter in which we run those emotions through and the outcome is telling. I ran the filter of my feelings through what the world said. The world of Middle school through college said if you didn’t have a boyfriend you must not be attractive or worth all that much! The filter of your surroundings today may not determine worth by your love life, but rather a particular job or level of education completed. The society in your office, peers or your family may say something else. How I pray that the filter on your heart determining your worth or value is not what others may say about love or success or what being a woman is all about.

Our emotions, all of them should be pressed through the gracious and compassionate filter of God’s Word. Let His timeless truths wash over you. Who you are in Christ is and should be the way in which we view ourselves.

 Sometimes the weight of others approval or disapproval is hard to balance with Gods Words because we don’t know His truths well enough. We do not have the foundation of truth. Therefore have not allowed Christ and His thoughts to transform our mind.

 Today, are you on cloud nine because your man just sent that bouquet of flowers your co-workers envy? Are you sad, or alone? Perhaps you are content or even Indifferent.  Sift those emotions, those circumstances through the lens of His Word and His truth.  May your contentment not simply be in having what you want this year, but because you are resting in the Sovereign Lord of your life. If you are overcome by loneliness, may you trust the Father who loves you with an everlasting love. A Father who is pressing His truths through varying circumstances to transform you into the image of His Son. 

Maybe you don’t feel the love of Christ. I have been there, my friend. In your time in His Word, ask His Spirit to press His love into your heart.  May you not only be filled with His love and acceptance as His chosen, adopted, and redeemed child, but may you be an extension of this love to others around you today. 

Eph 2:4-10 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great LOVE with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

by:Becky Lucarelli