Feb. 16: GOD'S INTIMATE LOVE

God says in His book, The Bible, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” (Isaiah 55:8 NIV) That is amazingly true in the way God relates to us. In Psalm 56:8 we are told that God’s love for us is so intimate and personal that He puts our tears in a bottle. Our smallest pain or personal injury is noticeable to God. But on the other hand, when we come to Him in repentance and trust, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103: 12 NIV)
Jeremiah 31:34 (NIV) has the Lord declaring “for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” In one instance God is dealing with the minutia of our hurtful experiences in life but in the next instance He uses a broad brush to cover over our sins and forget them.
Human beings operate on a different agenda. We tend to broad brush the hurts in other people’s lives, urging them to “stop crying over spilled milk”. We tend to remember every little failure of other’s lives, even cruelly reminding them of their shortcomings. Jesus had to reprimand us about this from the Sermon on the Mountain when he said “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5 NIV)
How much we need to be like Jesus! So many people need our sympathy and our empathy. Not just a shoulder to cry on but someone who will share their pain. And certainly there are many who need to be forgiven. We need to forgive them and urge them to get up and run the race again.
In Philippians 3, Paul talks about wanting to know more about Jesus so he can conform more to his pattern. How about you?

“Teach me to love others, O Lord, as much as I love myself;
so many people wait daily for me to love them in Your Name. Amen”