His Agape Love

     Love is such a funny thing.  We don't want to doubt the love people say they have for us.  We want it to be real and intense.  Experience sometimes betrays our desires.  And sometimes this human attempt (and often failure) at love severely tarnishes our understanding of how God loves us.  They say love can be so up and down with people because 'I can never know the real you'.  Human love is based on circumstances.  The Greek word for this type of love is 'philia'.  It's the type of love that describes friendship.
     God's love is the one love that is completely consistent.  It never changes or lessens.  It never ends.  He is head over heels in love with his creation... you.... me.... the neighbor who drives everyone crazy.  With all of our imperfections, quirks, and failures, God continues to love with a great passion!  God's love is one of 'agape'.  It is a sacrificial love.  God does know the real us.  And because of that, he sent Jesus - God in flesh - to die for us, so that we may have eternal life with Him in Heaven.  We are called to love with this agape kind of love, but it is impossible outside of God loving through us and helping us.
      Psalm 139 gives an amazing description of just how well he knows us, and how much He truly does agape us.  "Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar... You hem me in behind and before...  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb... All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be... How precious are your thoughts, Oh God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand..."
     We just have to accept and believe this great agape love that he has for us.  He died to cleanse us from sin that we may LIVE!  It's a free gift!  There is nothing we can do to earn this gift of love, this gift of salvation.  Simply receive it.  Believe it.   (John 3:16)  "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.  That whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life!" There is no greater love than this.  When I die I know where I am going.  I will be singing with the angels; I will be glorifying and praising the God who lives!  And I know that there is only one way to accomplish this.  (John 14:6)  "...No one comes to the Father except through me." 
     "Father, I am so unworthy of your love.  I praise you and I thank you for how sovereign and holy you are!  Thank you for your gift of eternal life.  There is no good thing in me without you.  Fill me, Lord.  Help me to love with this agape kind of love.  Make my heart ache to share this truth with others!"