THE UNFAILING LOVE OF THE LORD

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in Him.

Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!

Psalm 32:8-11

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Writer Barbara DeAngelis penned the following words regarding love:

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.

Note how there is no reference to the application of love. The writer is only talking about love itself and the power it holds in life.

I can relate to these words and maybe you can too. For I have felt love in its fullest sense and experienced its incredible power to transform and bring a joy unlike any other. I have also gone through times when I lost love and endured the feeling of forsakenness and abandonment, of being powerless without love in my life. I came to gain a great appreciation for love by losing it and then finding there was really only one source of unfailing love – and that was from the Lord.

Look at the life of David and you’ll see that he wasn’t always tuned in to love in the right places. Although he is known best for being a man after God’s own heart, he fell into the same temptations that any of us encounter and fell prey to the power of lust, sin’s false definition of love. His tryst with the married Bathsheba resulted in God’s judgment on David, all because he failed to seek and receive the only real source of love, the unfailing love of the Lord.

The good news is that although David was a sinner and committed terrible acts resulting in judgment, he also found himself forgiven and experiencing love in its purest sense through his love relationship with God. It’s what allowed him to write these closing words of the 32nd Psalm:  

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in Him.

Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!

Through these words from God through David, we are given guidance as to how to find the real source of love in life. For God is love (1 John 4:8) and we only know how to love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). And if we’re ever going to be able to give and receive love properly, then we have to love as God loves.

So how do we find this love?

Look at the scripture.

Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in Him.

To find the only true love in life, to find the love of the One who loved us first allowing us to love, we have to first place our trust in the Lord.

God’s word is truth and His word here tells us in plain English. “The Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in Him.” Trust in God fully and you will fully have all that God offers you, including His unfailing love.

Yes, our key to experiencing God’s love comes in trusting Him. I shared earlier that there was a time when I was living in pain and felt distant from love. I thought I knew what love was but I had placed my trust in a person and not the Lord. Consequently, I had prescribed to a love that could and did fail.

If I had only placed my trust in his love, then I would have saved myself a lot of anguish and hurt. Like I said, I had to lose love to really find it and by really finding it, I mean I had to find the real source of it – the Lord.

So how did I find trust in Him, and as a result, find His unfailing love?

I allowed Him to guide me and sought His instruction and counsel. Look back to the words of David:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.  

David had a concern about people and wanted them to find what he had discovered, the unfailing love of the Lord. This is why he was driven to instruct and teach others in the way they should go. David knew God’s expectations and wished to guide others to Him, to offer them his counsel. He knew that people had a stubborn tendency to resist God in exchange for their own desires. After all, David knew this from his own experience. All the more reason for him to seek to help others from repeating any mistakes he may have made himself.

Each day as I sit down and write what the Lord places on my heart, I only try to do what David did in this psalm, share my experiences and God’s word to try and bring people into a greater sense of trust in the Lord, a trust that will lead them to the surrounding presence and power of His love. My prayer is that people are led to that presence each and every day because there is something very special that we gain when we are in the midst of the Lord’s love.

Look one more time at the final words of this psalm:

Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!

How will we feel when we’re in the center of the Lord’s unfailing love?

We’ll be rejoicing, giving thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love.

We’ll be glad, immersed in the happiness that comes from receiving and experiencing His love.

And our hearts will want to sing out, to sing out the praises of the Lord Most High, the Lord who grants us His unfailing love.

Joy and gladness. Hearts that can’t contain the praise within and burst into songs of thanksgiving.

This is what happens when we trust in the Lord and receive His unfailing love.

Do you have His love today?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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