{Be Real} The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

She turned to me in the dark, and said, “I want you to know love.”

We were talking about guy and girl relationships, my mom and I. We had just finished errands and I was driving her home, looking ahead at the stoplight blinking red, green.

And that’s when I said it, so naturally.

“But I DO know love.

I know God’s love, and mom, I’ve known your love my whole life.

I do know love.”

I said it so certainly, so suddenly, faster than my mind could process, a true overflow of the heart. It was a moment when my mind caught up with what my Spirit already understood.  In coming to know God, I had come to know real love.

This is what I want to talk about with you as we start out a month focused on love – I want to shift our gaze from society’s focus on the male-female relationship and onto Love Himself.

I’m a single woman, almost 28 years old, so girls, I get it. I get the longing for a boyfriend, a husband, just someone who sees you and pursues you and draws you in to a beautiful adventure. My emotions have ebbed and flowed around that, sometimes feeling so strong as a single woman. And sometimes, feeling a longing so real and tangible it actually hurts.

I want you to know that I get the feeling – I’ve been in relationships but somehow, every Valentine’s Day, my only roses and chocolate come from my father. I love and adore my father – but somewhere in my heart I wonder, “God, is this going to be forever?”

I know the sting of relationships that end, and the ones that never materialize. Last year, my heart was left with a lot of hurt and disappointment after ending a relationship that I thought could be leading towards a future. But I saw in the weeks and months that followed, as the Lord gently pursued my heart, gently poured into the cracks of all of my hurt, I saw that HIS love was patient. HIS love was kind. I saw it real and tangible.  Everything I’ve ever looked for in another person – IS in the love of Jesus.

Girls, what I can’t answer for you is what God plans for your relationships, and what He is protecting you from on this side of eternity. We don’t always understand why God gives what He gives and withholds what He withholds – that’s where trust comes in. But we can exhale, and our hearts rest in this:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

-1 Corinthians 2:9

The heart of our Heavenly Father is to give us good gifts. There are times we may feel that God is withholding from us. But I feel that God longs to give us greater gifts than the ones we desire. He longs to give us Himself. Because He knows that He is the only gift that we actually need. Every other gift is a blessing – but God’s presence is our need.

God’s love for us, and the way He pursues us, draws us into the greatest love story ever told.

A divine romance with the creator of heaven and earth?! How can that really be? Sometimes it seems so incredible our minds can’t even fathom it. How can God leave Himself open to a relationship with me? And why would He even want that?

He wants it, girls, simply, because He created us in His image, and we are HIS.

What we need to do to be swept into this love story, is to open our hearts to the ways God pursues us, so steady, so gently.

You know, that sunset you saw last night? That conversation that happened at just the right time? The rain kissing the flowers and the droplet that caught your eye? The way He provided finances when nobody believed it would come through? The breath that fills your lungs this morning?

These are not just happenings – they are the love of God becoming tangible to you. His pursuit for you is real. God’s way of wooing you, beckoning you. Return. Return.

We all turned from God in the beginning, and we all turn from Him daily in small ways. But with His pursuit, He keeps drawing us back home. He never tires of pursuing, and He delights when we pursue Him back.

It’s easy for our hearts to wander, but girls, I challenge you to stay in His love.  Abide there, rest there.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God.”

-Jude 1:21

This is the real love we are celebrating. Not the love that comes with candy hearts and confetti. The real, daily, gritty, true, pursuing, fighting love of God.

If someone says to you this month, I wish you could know love, remember girls, you do know love. You have a relationship with Love Himself. Love Himself has fought for you, and keeps fighting for you, just to win your heart.

And let’s remember this, keep writing it upon our spirits:

God’s love has already WON. He won for us on that cross, the day He loved us to death and we were never the same.

Oh, this love…

Because of this love, we can sing, this day and every day.

 

“Because your lovingkindness is better than life,

my lips shall praise you.”

-Psalm 63:3

“In this the love of God was manifested towards us, that God has sent His only begotten son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us…”

-1 John 4:8-10