OH, HOW HE LOVES US!
The words of a song come to mind: ‘Oh, how… how He loves us, how He loves us so!’
I couldn’t get those bright, blue sparkling, tear-filled eyes out of my mind! That 60 something year old gentleman. That’s exactly what he was, a gentleman. Who, when I said, “Oh, isn’t it wonderful how Jesus loves?” said, “You don’t know, you just don’t know!”
I kind of thought he meant that he felt he wasn’t worthy or “you just don’t know how I’ve lived!”
But, no, he touched his heart with one hand and raised his other to heaven, smiled at me with those loving, blue eyes and said, “You just don’t know how much He loves me!” Then my eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t speak except to say, “ Yes, what wonderful love He has for us both.”
He kept turning away to wipe away the tears. How sweet, I thought that You are loving us, Holy Spirit. I couldn’t articulate how the Holy One was enveloping and moving all around us, just loving us, loving us all right there at that moment.
I knew then that it wasn’t what we thought we were there to do: pray, teach or preach. But, we were to just be. Just be with one another, humbled in God’s unfailing, underserved love for all of us there.
I thanked those at that picnic table for allowing us to hang out with them for a while, and they spoke up and said, “No, thank you for spending your time with us.”
How I felt at that moment was pure love for someone else that Jesus loved, that Jesus bled and died for, and oh, how there’s nothing we can do to earn it, and nothing we can do to keep Him away. There’s nothing we can do to stop His everlasting, ever-enduring love from breaking through our pain, our sorrow, our displeasure with one another. His love is truly our breakthrough- for each and every one of us who are created to carry His love and then give it away!
God wants to do something here today! Some of you have broken hearts, brokenness that you don’t know how to repair. There are some of you here that the cares of this world have just weighed you down with: depression, despair, all the stuff that Satan just wants to push you down with and bury you under with such a heaviness that you don’t know how to get out from under.
God wants to release you from all of that weightiness today! If you will just come and bow before Him right now, right where you are, and lay down those burdens, He will take them from you.
As you do that, as you release that brokenness, that torment, that grief, He will then be able to fill you up with His peace, His love, His joy! He can then replace that broken heart with a heart that is whole again, even better than it was before. God is reaching for you. Reach out to Him as well! You’ll never be the same, never the same!
-Debbie Matthews
3 comments:
Debbie, there was so much going through my heart and mind when you were sharing this at church. My heart was ready to burst! :) We were blessed as you shared, and Mark was hoping to get a copy of this. So thanks for posting it!!
BEAUTIFULLY expressed. My heart was stirred even more as I listened to you on Sunday. Like Micah it is ready to burst. I'm so thankful you shared this!
God is so good! As I awoke even this morning, I turned my thoughts to Him. As I began to tell Him, "Good morning, Lord, I love you!", I experienced such a loving presense in my room that I can hardly express! He was already holding His arms out to me as I awoke to immediately enter in to that place with Him there! He just filled me with an inexplicable joy that I smiled and laughed and said, "You're just too good, did You know that?" Ha, Ha, Ha! Of course He knows that, but oh, how He just loves me!!!!
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