Listening to Love

John 10:27-28 ~ NLT

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me,”

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The people hearing Jesus’ message for the first time, may have had difficulty believing it. They had been waiting for a Messiah for so long, Jesus’ words might have seemed too good to be true. After leaders who had used them for their own gain, hearing about a leader who truly loved them must have sounded like more than they could believe.

 

God doesn’t love us in the way of human understanding. God’s love will never change, no matter what happens. Nothing can take us away from His love and nothing can make Him take His love away from us. God’s love is a love that never quits, how encouraging that knowledge is for our hearts; God will never leave us alone.

 

Nothing in the entire world could ever take God’s love away from us. We can’t do anything to make Him retract it. God doesn’t change His mind about us. From the moment you were conceived God was confident and unshakeable in His choice to love you. He doesn’t change His mind and He doesn’t leave us. That isn’t what the love of the Father does, He sticks with us through everything, no matter what.

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Open Our Eyes

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Matthew 20:33 ~ NLT

““Lord,” they said, “we want to see!””

Jesus was coming into the city and two blind men started crying out for Him to have mercy on them and heal them. The crowd told them to be quiet, but they called out all the more loudly. Jesus heard them and healed their eyes so they could see.

 

I found it interesting that the crowd tried to quiet these men, similarly to how the disciples tried to send the children away from Jesus. Far too often, people who are desperate for God’s Presence and love will be hushed or even discarded. The good news is, God doesn’t listen to the naysayers; God listens to His children. When we cry to Him, we are guaranteed an answer.

 

I love the words the blind men used, “Lord, we want to see!” They didn’t have to use big words and long prayers. They just stated their needs and desires before Jesus, and He healed them. So many of us long to see a revival throughout America, what if we started that revival by praying the prayer of the blind men? Open our eyes let us see. What would we see if we took a look through Heaven’s eyes? Would we see people as too dirty to be worth our time? Or would we see God’s children who are broken and desperately need God’s touch, even if they know it?

 

Today, I am praying that your eyes are opened and that when you look around you see PEOPLE rather than mere human bodies as you go through your day. Let’s all be the love of Jesus to the people we see, maybe the people that nobody else seems to see or notice. You never know how much a smile and a friendly greeting could mean to someone. Once hope gets started, it’s impossible to stop, so let’s get it started.

Persevere to the Promise

1 Peter 5:10 ~ NLT

“In His kindness God called you to share in His eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, He will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.”

Now that’s some of the best news you’ll hear all day. Through His kindness, God was willing to send Jesus to earth to save us. He did all of that just so we would have the opportunity to spend forever with Him. We will be able to encounter Him and rest in His Presence for the rest of, well, forever.

 

Until we arrive in Heaven, however, there are a lot of things we have to deal with and handle. Life is no picnic, as they say. It doesn’t matter what your life is like, everyone faces trials and hardships of different degrees. Nobody is excluded. That’s not the greatest news, but, there is hope to go with it.

 

Here’s the good news, whenever we go through hard times, God is there to back us up with His love. Everything we lose in the fire, God will restore with something better than we could have imagined. Through the difficult times, we have God’s support and encouragement. When things are harder than we think we can handle, God will strengthen us so we can. And finally, through our entire lives, in good times and bad, we can trust that we are standing somewhere safe, and that’s on the love of God.