Perfect in Love

“If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.” (1 John 4:12, 16, 18)

Each and every day I am more and more in awe of God’s love for me. And slowly I am learning to trust him, really trust him. When I began to heal from my abuse I had a few people tell me that if I had more faith then I would not allow my fears to overwhelm me. It isn’t that I lacked faith, it was more that I was afraid to let God love me. I needed to abide in his love so that He could abide in me and then allow his perfect love to cast out my fears. I had to experience his love so I began to look closely at all the ways that he was with me throughout the day. I began to write down the things that he did in my life that I believed displayed his love no matter how small they were. This process helped me to become conscious of his love and I began to heal. Not only did I become aware of how intimately God loves me each and every moment, I also began to see how he was with me through the abuse, how faithful He has always been.

The bible study that I am participating in is different from other bible studies because it calls us to use scripture as a way to encounter Christ through meditation and prayer. Each lesson focuses on a different virtue and this lesson has been on faithfulness. The lesson directs us to scripture from the Old Testament as well as the New Testament and each one speaks of God’s love for us. He will always remain faithful even when we choose to sin. The more I realize how much God loves me the more I want to surrender to his will and let go of my own.

In my bible study we had to choose one of the scripture passages from our lesson that we felt God was really speaking to us through. It seems odd that a passage from Lamentations speaks so well of God’s faithfulness. Lamentations is full of grief and was written at a time of crisis for the Israelites with the destruction of the temple, exile of their leaders and the fall of Jerusalem. Yet it is often in our darkest moments that we feel God’s love which is the source of all hope. The union of poignant grief and unquenchable hope reflects the constant tension between the weakness of man and the strength of God’s love. The passage that I chose reminds us that God’s love will never run dry and his favors will never be exhausted. It encourages us to always remain hopeful and to wait patiently in peace.

“The favors of the LORD are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent; they are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness. My portion is the LORD, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him. Good is the LORD to one who waits for him, to the soul that seeks him; it is good to hope in silence for the saving help of the LORD. It is good for a man to bear the yoke of his youth.” (Lamentations 3:22-27)