The Love of God by Melissa T. Lee

“…God is love.” 1 John 4:8

 Most believers would easily agree that God is love. When I compare God’s love with a parent’s love for his child, Christians nod along with me and say, “Amen.”

When I say God loves us like a friend, again, the nods and “Oh, yes.” But when I say God loves us like a lover chasing after His beloved, eyes grow wide and people back away.

For some reason, Christians often shake their heads in disgust when I compare God’s love to that of a lover. Some get angry, and say words like, “sacrilege.”  Many have no idea that I didn’t make that up. God says it Himself.

I’m a novelist. I write allegorical romance mainly for two reasons:
1. I am a hopeless romantic. I really do believe in love that is meant to be. I believe in love that lasts forever and happily ever after. Not all of that is fully attainable with human love. But I plan to show you the similarities of these aspects of romantic love to God’s great love for us.

2. I see the world in allegory. I read much of the Old Testament as an allegory for Christ. I see the relationships God has given us with other people, as allegorical for His love. I see marriage and the physical relationship that accompanies it as allegorical to the love and relationship God desires to have with us.

I didn’t pick these ideas out of nowhere and make them my own. They are God’s ideas and I can back what I’m saying with His Word—His love letter to you and me.

God, the Suitor
How does a suitor pursue his beloved? If you think of adolescence, when you first thought of dating, often you heard of a possible love connections from people not involved in the potential relationship at all. A friend or classmate walked up to you and said, “John likes you.”

You stopped and considered. “John likes me?”

Maybe you’d never thought of John like that before. Perhaps you said, “John who?” because you didn’t know who he was. Or maybe you knew John and your first words were, “Well, I don’t like him. He’s kind of weird.”

Or maybe you enjoyed the thought of John liking you, and sought out John’s company to get to know him better.

Is this really any different from how you first learned that Jesus loved you?  A person told you, “Jesus loves you.” The person telling you had no control over how you would take the news. Maybe you didn’t really know who Jesus was at the time. Maybe your first response was, “No, don’t want to be associated with Jesus. Too weird.” Or maybe you were open to it and sought to spend time getting to know Jesus.

But it all started with an outsider telling you about Jesus, just like a friend playing matchmaker.

***

Melissa T. Lee is the author of The Earth Painter and The Difference Between Night and Day. She writes Paranormal Romance and keeps busy as the mother of three crazy boys. Presently, she is working toward reediting and republishing The Earth Painter, and its sequel, The Man Painter. This is the first in her devotional series about our romantic God.

Guest Blog: Staci Stallings

A Stop on the Road of Life

With three kids, a business, a husband with a business, a house, a yard, and a very close extended family, my time is at a premium. This means I’m usually running as fast as I can to keep up with everything—and sometimes failing miserably in that endeavor. Recently I was caught between two major obligations, driving from one to the other, and late again.

In my mind I was ticking off all that had to be done when I got home:  make supper, give the kids a bath, help with homework, straighten the house, lay out clothes for the morning… when suddenly the pickup in front of me put on his blinker and veered over to the empty lane beside us.  I hit the brakes and then realized why he had stopped. A funeral procession.

Instantly although my first thought was, “Oh, no! I don’t have time for this!” I, too pulled to the side of the road, turned off my radio and stopped just as the policeman and the hearse passed.  I looked beyond them to see how many cars with lights there were and realized I was going to be there for a while.

Turns out, I had no idea how long “a while” would be. Because the procession was actually coming around a corner up the road, I couldn’t actually see the whole thing, which could easily have been 200 cars or more. Nonetheless, as I sat there in silence, perspective began to fall around me.  Here we on this side of the road were, living our lives, driving in the fast lane to get what we had to get done, seeming to have no time as it was, but when we needed to—out of courtesy or obligation—we stopped.

Life stopped so that we could all take a moment to recognize not only the grief of one family, but so that we could recognize that we, too, will one day be at the head of that funeral procession.

See, death and 24-hours are the two great equalizers in this lifetime.  We each have 24-hours to live our lives each day.  You cannot buy more time.  You cannot will more time.  You cannot even strong-arm more time.  You and the wino on the street have exactly the same amount of hours in every day.  The only difference is in how you choose to use that time.  However, here is a sobering thought—you and the greatest doctor on the earth also have the same number of hours in each day.  He has used his brilliantly. How have you used yours?

Death is our other greatest equalizer.  No matter who you are, where you are from, who you know, or how much money you have, one day you, too, will be laid out and leading that procession.  The question is, how long will your procession be?

As I watched this person’s procession, it became clear how this person had chosen to use those 24-hours a day that God had granted.  Well.  Very, very well indeed.  The cars just kept coming and kept coming, rounding that bend and lining up until there was a mile of them, and they were still coming.

For one moment that day I stopped on my harried trek through life to really consider where I’m going on this road we call life, what it all means, and whether or not I’m head in the direction that I want to end up.  Truth is, it was well worth the stop.

Copyright, Staci Stallings, 2003

***

Staci Stallings, the author of this article, is a Contemporary Christian author and the founder of Grace & Faith Author Connection. Staci has a special surprise for you today and tomorrow only...

FREE ON KINDLE TWO DAYS ONLY!

August 15 & 16

Staci's "Amazing!" novel:

To Protect & Serve

 "Reading To Protect & Serve, I'm taken away to another world, a world I want to be a part of and never leave. Staci's characters are real with real everyday problems. I love that.

Oh, and the firemen in this story, they're smokin' hot! Especially the hero!"

--Debra, Amazon Reviewer

When control freak Lisa Matheson falls for handsome but shy firefighter, Jeff Taylor, it's possible that life might just be going her way for a change. The only problem is she can't control of Jeff or the death wish he seems to have...

Available as a free download from Amazon!

God is like a water bottle

God is like a water bottle. Water is the symbol of purity.

Not only is it pure itself, but it purifies. Have you seen those "Liverite" commercials? It shows the animation of a liver wondering why the heart gets all the attention when it is the organ that cleans out the body's system of all that we put in it. Water does the same thing, it purifies and cleans out our systems. As the liver asks, "If that's not love, what is?"

So why do we always try to improve upon it? We add sugar, caffeine, coloring, chemicals, bubbly fizz, or fruit flavoring. The problem is that when water becomes too busy bringing those things into our bodies, how can it do the job of cleaning out our system?

God is like silence. Or at least He talks to us in it.

It is difficult to find a moment of silence in our busy world. The radio plays in our cars, when we go for a jog, while we work. Some people cannot even sleep unless they have the background noise of a TV. Most people cannot eat lunch alone, but need someone around to help fill the silence with conversation. It's possible to wake up in the morning and be so busy talking and listening to radio/television/other voices that we never have a moment of silence for God to speak. Even our prayer time often consists of us talking to Him.

 And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12)


He wasn't in the radio, the TV, or the additives to our day, and if we don't sit still, we'll miss his voice.

Do we really need to rely on these machines and other people for our comfort? Do we need caffeine to give us strength? Are we putting our faith in things to give us what we need when they can never truly deliver what they offer and can only let us down? Do these things honestly satisfy, or do they leave us empty and run-down?