What a Powerful Love! Part 1

I hope this finds you all doing very well. It has been well over a year since I posted a blog, and it has been a year full of battles, heartaches, and even a miracle or two. I wanted to post a quick one to let all my subscribers (or at least the ones still left) that I have redesigned a little of the blog and will start this thing up again. I will be adding more links later and will eventually have a full service counseling site up and running.

My favorite subject has always been love. If you read my earlier posts, you will find that I think that love is the most powerful weapon we Christians have in our arsenal. I have preached and taught on the subject on many occasions, but just did not feel in my soul that I was getting the message out. Then I went through a trial so fiery that it almost destroyed everything I held sacred! Of course the Lord delivered me through it, but in the process He allowed me to finally "get it." By it, I mean love.

I will go into details in a later post, but to sum it up, I nearly lost my wife of almost 15 years very recently. It was nothing like adultery or domestic violence, but it was mostly my fault. I had hurt her so deeply that she became so angry and bitter that we almost called it quits. After many tears and false starts and stops, and despite all of our friends and family totally giving up on our marriage, God led us through and she forgave me, and now we are like newlyweds. We still have some things to work through, but this sacred union is intact, Praise God.

But looking back, I began to think: If I loved her this much, I mean so deeply and intently that it hurt and felt like my soul was being ripped from my body, how much more does God love us? I mean, we all know John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life," but what does that really mean? The Bible tells us that, but where does it explain just what "so loved" mean? We Christians claim to know, but do you really? Go ahead and try to explain it to someone, then. Harder to do than it sounds, huh? But God being who He is, He gave us a few examples in His Word so we could know just how much that "agape" love really is.

Look at the book of Hosea, for example. Hosea was a righteous man who was just about as perfect as a man could be without being God. He was a prophet, and was blameless in his work and actions. So God decided He was going to show Hosea just how much He loved His people, so He commanded this well thought of "church man" to go and marry a woman. Not just any woman, but a .............whore. Yes, you read that right. A prostitute.

But here is the good part. Not only did God tell her to marry her, because anyone could marry someone and then immediately divorce them, but no, God also told Hosea to LOVE HER!

And he did.

But she did not love him back. Oh, it was fine for a while, but before too long, Gomer (his wife) started longing for her previous life. Hosea gave her all her heart desires, but she still did not love him on the same level as he loved her. When it was convenient, she was the best wife in the world. But Hosea was a boring old prophet, so she left him. And she went back to being a whore.

Have you ever loved someone so deeply that it hurt, only to have them not love you back? The bed is cold, the son or daughter steals from you, the husband turns his head when you try to steal a kiss. You get the message.

But the story does not end there.

In my next post, I will finish up and share with you what God showed me through Hosea and Gomer thanks to a fellow minister that obeyed God and preached a sermon that probably not only saved my marriage, but more importantly saved both my wife and my souls as well. I am burning to share it with you now, but this has already gone on too long.

Please forward this to your friends and invite them to subscribe as well. And feel free to post any comments or questions you may have, even disagreements. And keep checking back for part two and for our new website to be up.

Until then, may the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ richly bless you and keep you!

Jesse