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. Yes, Jesus Loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.
The Bible tells me so.
We all know this song, and probably have from the time we were children. Simplistic in its truth, powerful in its message. Jesus asked His disciples, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” and called a child to Him and said, “Yes! I tell you that unless you change and become like little children, you won’t even enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Matthew 18:1-3) Children have this amazing ability to simply believe and trust, and it is that type of trust and belief that He wants us to have in Him. He wants us to know and believe the simplicity of the words in this song that He loves us. His love is so simple, but so huge all at the same time.
1 Corinthians 13
[1] I may speak in the tongues of men, even angels; but if I lack love, I have become merely blaring brass or a cymbal clanging. [2] I may have the gift of prophecy, I may fathom all mysteries, know all things, have all faith – enough to move mountains; but if I lack love, I am nothing. [3] I may give away everything that I own, I may even hand over my body to be burned; but if I lack love, I gain nothing. [4] Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or shellfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. [6] Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth. [7] Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures. [8] Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass. [9] For our knowledge Is partial, and our prophecy partial; [10] but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass. [11] When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, argued like a child; now that I have become a man, I have finished with childish ways. [12] For now we see obscurely in a mirror, but then it will be face to face. Now I know partly; then I will know fully, just as God has fully known me. [13] But for now, three things last – trust, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love [14:1] Pursue love!
Let’s talk about love. How do you view love? How do you look at love as it is shown to you, and how you show it to others? If we are honest, we throw the word love around like a football, and sometimes, we fumble it. If we really look inside of ourselves, our viewpoint of love comes from our childhood and how we perceive the love of our parents. Do we judge them for not loving us the way we feel they should have? Do we blame them for not loving us enough to justify our actions? Do we say, “They loved me the best that they knew how” to cover our feelings of rejection? Do we take that pattern of our perception of love and carry it with us as we become adults? Here is the thing about love, our love will never be perfect on its own, but it can be made perfect in Jesus because He IS love.
In Hebrew, the word love is ahab spelled with the letters Alef, Hey, and Bet. Its definition in English begins with the words, “a strong feeling of affection and concern”, but in the Hebrew, it is defined as “to desire, to breathe after”. The letters Alef, Hey, and Bet mean “The Father revealed”. Love is not just an emotion, when we are in Him it is the unspeakable love and tender mercies of God in the covenant relationship with His people. Ahab has a numeric value of 8. When we turn the number 8 on its side, we get infinity, ∞. His love is unending and forever. Like every other word study I do, I had to look at the words that have the numeric value of 8 and I discovered something that brought me to tears. 8 equals love, and in His love for us, Isaiah 53:5 says, But he was wounded because of our crimes, crushed because of our sins; the disciplining that makes us whole fell on him, and by his bruises (stripes) we are healed. 8 equals “to be crushed, depressed, anxious, despondent”. Love = the cross.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have love you. No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is about; but I have called you friends, because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. John 15: 12-15 (Fun fact, 8 also equals “friend”). What a friend we have in Jesus!
Last night, as I was going to sleep, I asked the Lord to fill my heart and my spirit with His love. That like a child, I just wanted to crawl up into His lap and feel His arms wrap around me, just as I did with my own children and my granddaughter. All I could think was that no matter how far away from me they are, nothing could ever make me stop loving them or wanting to hold them again as I was asking Him to hold me. It was at that moment this scripture came to my mind; [35] Who will separate us from the love of the Messiah? Trouble? Hardship? Persecution? Hunger? Poverty? Danger? War? [36] As the Tanakh puts it, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long, we are considered sheep to be slaughtered.” [37] No, in all these things we are super conquerors, through the one who has loved us. [38] For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers, neither what exists nor what is coming, [39] neither powers above nor powers below, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which comes to us through the Messiah Yeshua, our Lord. Romans 8:35-39 I could see in my mind a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he was going after the grail and came out of the cave and almost fell of the cliff into an insanely deep ravine. It hits him and he says, “It’s a leap of faith!” As he lays wounded in the cavern, his father says, “You must believe”. With a pregnant pause and dramatic music, Indie takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and steps out into nothing, to land on a bridge that was not visible. It was not until he stepped out in faith that he could see it.
It is the same with Jesus, we walk through our life and we can not see the love that He has for us until we step out in faith toward Him. It is then that we can see that invisible bridge, the cross, on which He laid down His life for us. It is with that bridge that we can know without a doubt that NOTHING can separate us from His love. There will never be a time, situation, or thing that will ever separate my children from my love. There is nothing they will ever say or do that will make me not love them. If I feel that way about them, how much more does He feel that about us?
I am an imperfect person. There are times I look at myself and ask, “God why would you even want to love me?” There are times it does not make sense that a holy, perfect, righteous God would even want to have anything to do with me. When I am honest with myself, and I look head on at my sin, I ask that question. The answer goes back to the beginning, long before He created the world and everything in it. He knew me then, He loved me then and because nothing can separate me from His love, He loves me now.
Comments