Everlasting love

Everlasting love

  The Lord appeared to him from far away.
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

Charles Spurgeon, the great English Baptist preacher, said about this verse in Jeremiah: “It is not, ‘I have pitied thee,’ nor ‘I have thought about thee,’ but ‘I have loved thee.’ God is in love with you.” What an amazing thought. To be in love with someone or something is a sublime human emotion, and if we raise the power of this love to the nth degree, then we may come close to understanding the kind of love that God has for his people. With this kind of love, there is no question of it ever failing, and there is no question of God’s faithfulness. Human love can sometimes fade, people drift apart and the intensity of love can diminish; this is not unusual. But God himself has declared an undying love, one that has remained unchanged from the beginning of time.

When love fades or is taken from us, we can feel lost and vulnerable. Will love return? Is this relationship in peril? Will this love always be here? Vows are broken, and promises made are forgotten or overlooked. Marriages fail at a regular rate; but we are only human and we are destined to feel uncertainty in our lives. Love is not always permanent, often it is not. Forever is a long long time and there is no guarantee that love will go the distance in our imperfect lives; sometimes love takes work and effort, and sometimes the effort becomes too much for us.

Loving God does not take hard work, it is effortless. Our Lord is all forgiving, all embracing, all giving, and God has never broken a promise. There is no cloud over our relationship to God. When we close our eyes at night we know that when we open them again in the morning, there will not have been any alteration to our feelings for God, and God’s feelings for us. From the moment we let God take us by the hand, the love we feel will remain, unchanged and unchangeable. Nothing can tear us away from God and God will not let anyone tear us away from him.

God offers a love that is permanent; Jesus is the perfect bridegroom, whose faithfulness is unquestioned and there is no greater security than this; the steadfast love of the Lord.

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