Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

Scripture:  “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God”   1 John 3:1 (NKJV)

Growing up, my mother used to tell me, her overly-sensitive little girl, ‘When you leave this house each morning, leave your feelings at the door; it’s a mean, nasty world out there, and folks don’t give a rap ‘bout your feelings!’  While that advice was then and remains hard to debate,  especially today,  it’s far more enduring and edifying counsel to daily recall how deep, how wide, and how high, and endlessly rich is the Savior’s love, especially for those of us who belong to Him!  That’s worth remembering every hour of every day!.
       
Author Thomas Merton is credited with saying, “If we know how great is the love of Jesus for us, we will never be afraid to go to Him in all our poverty, all our weakness, all our spiritual wretchedness, and infirmity.”  God is in love with each of His blood-purchased ones!  He knew us at our worst before He found us in our lost condition.  “Each of the days ordained for us was written before even one of them came to be,” says Psalm 139:16.   That alone should assure us that no matter the trial or the foe,  our heavenly Father can and does use them all to conform us  to the image of Christ;  but we must be willing to yield to that process, entrusting all that He allows to happen to us into His sovereign and omnipotent hands. (Ps. 66:10-12) Without faith, it is indeed impossible to please Him.  (Heb. 13:6)   He doesn’t love us “by degrees,” nor conditionally, and certainly these aspects of His nature and character are worth remembering daily.  Bless God for His indescribably wonderful love!

Prayer: Dear Father,  “ O, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast unmeasured, boundless, free; rolling as a mighty ocean, in its fullness over me…”  Thank You, Abba, for imbuing us with a sense of the reality of Your love every day; help us to live each moment in the light of that enduring and divine love.  In Jesus’ name, Amen!

(by Denise Diggs)