This post has been brewing in my heart for the past few days, as Valentine's Day has been approaching. And I now find myself with a few moments of quiet and an opportunity to put my thoughts here who for whoever happens to pop in for a visit.
I always like to not only focus on our "worldly" reasons for holidays, but I like to think about the spiritual significance they can also have... so I have been thinking about how the love of God always satisfies and how His love is the only one which can meet the deepest, most unspoken needs of our hearts. Years ago I was truly ministered to as I read "The Perfect Love" by Ruth Myers. I had just suffered a big-time broken heart as my fiance had broken things off and we were no longer engaged or even seeing each other... my future was uncertain, I had 3 friends who were engaged and whose weddings I was in (how hard was that!), and I was just plain hurting. So I sought comfort in God and His Word... and He spoke powerfully to me through His Word and through the book I mentioned above. He brought total and complete healing to my heart and I found a love that would never abandon me or change His mind about me.
I wanted to share a few quotes from "The Perfect Love" that truly ministered to me. It has been years since I read this book, but some of the passages I can remember as if I read them yesterday...
"This is where we find the kind of love we most deeply need - not in human relationships, but in God. If we want real love, ideal love, perfect love, God's heart is where to find it. It's the only love big enough to meet the God-sized needs of your life and mine."
"Indeed God can and will go beyond merely meeting those needs. 'God is so vastly wonderful,' wrote A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God, 'so utterly and completely delightful, that He can without anything other than Himself meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.' ... God has proven to me that He can more than satisfy my heart - as I let Him." (page 7)
"I discovered that God's lovingkindness is good, abundant, marvelous, precious, and better than life. It extends to the heavens, and the earth is full of it. It is from everlasting, and it will be built up forever. It is mine for all the days of my life and for all of eternity. The Lord shows it to those who trust Him, who fear Him, and who call upon Him. It follows us, surrounds us, and crowns us. By it we enter His house, by it we expect answers to prayer, and through it we will stand unshaken, for it will hold us up when our feet slip. It satisfies us and is the one unfailing basis for rejoicing and being glad all our days. It is infused into all God is and into all He does ..." (page 99)
So, for those of you who are sad, lonely, or depressed this Valentine's Day, lift your eyes up, focus them on the one who died for you, who passionately and fiercely loves you, who will satisfy your every need, and who alone can give you all the love your heart desperately desires. Find joy and contentment in His love... and He will bring peace to your heart and soul.
"May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God's children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is, and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God Himself." Ephesians 3:17-19 The Living Bible
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