You are Loved

I don’t really know the history of Valentine’s Day, but my dad or my mom used to say that it was a holiday fabricated much like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day in order to sell more flowers and greeting cards. In other words, they saw it as a marketing ploy for money. Mom or dad may have been cynical – just a tiny bit. Most people believe it to be a day of romantic love.

Regardless, today I see on my facebook feed all the love in the air, and I think of …

• the one who has been single far longer than she ever expected to be single, and God has not removed her desire for a husband nor has He provided one yet.
• the one who has been married for what feels like forever and she’s forgotten the last time she felt loved, but she sticks in it because she wants to obey God or because frankly, she can’t think of a better way.
• the one who lost a husband before old age, and each year she is reminded of what she no longer has, the memories hitting her all at once and sucking the life out of her.
• the one whose marriage failed, ended in divorce, and she still hasn’t found that special someone to spend her days with.
• and so many other scenarios of comparison that rise up on days like today.

Today, many men and women are feeling unloved, forgotten, hopeless, and weak, and all the darn photos of chocolates and flowers and special dinners cooked are making them feel they are less than.

Last year, a blog friend of mine sent me a Valentine. It meant so much to me, and I remembered my love of cards, so this year, I thought of the holiday as a day to remind people of God’s love for them. So here is my Valentine to you:

You are loved, always and forever, by an amazing God. He sees you just as you are, and He still loves you. His word says that, “He loves you with an everlasting love,” (Jer 31:3) and He is the only one to ever love you to death (John 3:16). He knows every single thing about you, and He still loves you. There is nothing you could do to earn His love or gain His love. He just loves you. As Beth Moore says, “He is crazy about you.” He’s etched your name on His hands and You are written on His heart.

I don’t know all the answers about why life is hard and why we have to wait for things, but He is good and He does love you. Today, I want you to think on that.

Not only that, I want to start a love revolution, and I want you to think of one person to reach out to that may not know they are loved. Tell them in your own words or share mine if you’d rather, but don’t let a day go by without telling that lonely someone that they are loved, they are chosen, they are thought of, and they are seen.

Let’s make Valentine’s Day a new fangled every day revolution for brotherly love and agape love.

If you are already God’s child, then

“A new commandment I give to you, that you agape one another: just as I have agaped you, you also are to agape one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have agape for one another.” John 13:34-35

God’s command has always been to love, but when Jesus said “a new command,” He was telling His disciples to love with God’s love – a love that goes deeper and over and beyond our human love for one another, and this love is how all people will know. Look around – do all your peeps know?

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8

“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:22-15

If you know you’ve been loved to death and back to life again, won’t you join the love revolution? Won’t you be willing to die so that another may live? By dying, I mean – Let go of your pride or anything earthly holding you back and spread the love of Jesus, that you may grow in grasping the depth, width, and length of His love for you (Ephesian 3:14-19) and so that someone would know he or she is loved perhaps for the first time?

Leave me a comment letting me know what you are doing to spread His love today. I love you, but His love, it is infinitely better.