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Thoughts for a Woman's Heart |
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encouragement in things that matter |
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Created for Love
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It is the song that every Sunday School child knows, but its message is a powerful declaration of the greatest truth in Scripture. Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; they are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me ... the Bible tells me so. The Bible tells us in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness." And it tells us in 1 John 4:19, "We love, because He first loved us."
We live in a society that longs to be loved, but we are becoming more and more isolated within that society. Teachers and caregivers hesitate and think twice before touching for fear of charges of sexual abuse. Fathers pull away from teenaged daughters. Men don’t hug men and even women are careful in expressing mutual affection. Homosexuality could be an undeserved label. The proverbial Good Samaritan is a declining possibility. He fears AIDS or a major lawsuit. Fears are multiplied and love is subtracted. And if we settle the fears, we become simply too busy – apart from each other, and apart from God.
The desire within us to be loved is more than just normal – it was given to us by God. When He created a woman to live in relationship with man, God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone." But we were also made to long for relationship with God – to be loved by Him. The psalmist speaks of a heart thirsty for God when he says, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." The woman of Samaria thirsted with a deep inner thirst that wanted to be accepted, wanted to be cared for, wanted to be treated with respect and dignity, that wanted simply to be loved. That was how God made her and that is how Jesus met her. Others had used her and abandoned her. Jesus loved her and gave her living waters of forgiveness that ushered her into a relationship with God, making her the recipient of all the privileges of a beloved child.
There is a satisfaction and a completion found in God’s love that no other relationship can offer, and there is a healing in God’s love that soothes the hurt when other relationships have failed. His love needs to be embraced by more than just our theology and responded to with more than just our outward obedience or our service. It needs to be fully embraced by our heart and our spirit, and wholly depended on. Daughter of God, crawl up in His lap and let Him love you. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that will make Him push you away.
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— Bev |
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