I remember as a kid me and my girlfriends would take a flower, usually one that looks like Mexican daisy, and we would pluck out petal by petal, saying “He loves me, He loves me not”. I don’t even remember why we used to do this but I think the aim was to have the last plucked petal to be the one that lands when you say “He loves me”. For the number of times we played this little game, I don’t even remember any boy I associated with the game. Maybe it was some imaginary guy somewhere in the future, I have no idea. One thing I do remember is we got really excited when the last petal plucked landed on “He loves me” and when it landed on “He loves me not” we didn’t like it and we would get another flower and start the process so that this time it would end up on “He loves me”. This was in primary school, so I don’t know what to make of it that we had already discovered it was a good thing to be loved.
Off course as I’ve grown up I have seen the importance of being loved, the evidence of what it looks like to be loved and the meaning of love. I refuse to say the meaning of true love because love is true. The meaning of love and what it looks like is where there are a million dialects and languages and many of them have nothing to do with love. We’ve heard stories and watched movies of abusive relationships and the abusive person will say they “love” their person. The abused person ends up staying and sometimes one of the factors for staying is that they love the person. Sometimes we compliment each other saying how we “love “the other persons character, dressing, achievements, strengths, personality etc. Hollywood, Nollywood, Bollywood’s and all the woods of the world will also come up with their own version. In the end there’s a worldly ”salad” bowl of what love is with many ingredients which if ingested and digested would result in some kind of food poisoning with moderate to severe complications to the body, some even fatal.
Then there’s THE LOVE that propels you to want to do your best. The one that nurtures and protect you and makes the protection of a mama bear look like paper. The one that’s rooting for you and loyal to you in unfathomable ways. The one that never fails to be by your side when others can’t or won’t. On top of being present at your weakest or lowest moment, it’s the kind of love that is fully capable and equipped to see and carry you through without being depleted or diminished itself. All those love songs that sing about a love so strong might as well be singing about the strength of a blade of grass. With this kind of love, you actually never get to see or feel how powerful it really is. You have an idea, but its so powerful its beyond your human understanding. But one thing about it is you know its there. Or do you?
This is the problem we have today, that salad bowl has distorted peoples vision of love. They don’t see, can’t see and in fact have refused to acknowledge it because in their defence how do you acknowledge what you don’t know? Humans being humans, they will force, influence or condition you to think of love as that salad bowl which actually contains mercury, asbestos, a herd of anopheles mosquitoes and the serpent that deceived Eve in the garden of Eden. And people believe it and wonder why they don't thrive as they were destined to. This isn't the worst part. When love knocks on their door, they reject it because its not presented itself as a clown. They're used to clowns.
There’s nothing good in that salad bowl because even if you had a rainbow of 50 + fruits in that salad, once asbestos has been in contact with the fruits, all their positive effects are negated and you are still exposed to something that’s toxic and very harmful to you. Do people set out to deceive others on what love is? Do they understand what it is? In the conscious realm the answer is yes and no but, in the unconscious, only God knows. There’s also nothing true in that salad bowl. Those deadly things do not comprise what a salad bowl should ever have. A lot of things come to play as to why we would ever think love is the salad bowl I described. One entity that's for sure responsible for lighting that match in the forest is the father of lies, the devil himself.
He has made it such that any truth we know about love has been stolen with the aim of killing and destroying our entire understanding of love. Just think of what people consider as love. The image is such that I remember sister Winfrey (whom I have cancelled for my own reasons but give credit where its due) mention in her talk show that “Love doesn’t hurt”. This is a good start. How does the Excellent Book describe it. This is where my testimony comes in.
Many weddings have 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 as one of the readings of the ceremony. That verse nicely summarises what I love about God. Of the many years I have lived on this earth, and the many things I have done that are clearly disobedient and defiant of God’s instructions, he has still taken his time with me and has not cancelled me the way I’ve cancelled sister Winfrey. In his eyes he sees my potential and I believe his thought is that I am worth the wait.
First of all who would ever do that. Who is capable of seeing the real me and knowing yes, I may be raggedy at times/many times but if he was to speak in my defence (which he constantly does), he may say I have a good heart and if he did you know it would be the truth because God is not a man that he should lie. How many times have I asked for forgiveness then the next day or week, I’ve done the very thing I said I wouldn’t do. Whatever raggedy thing I’ve done he has not dismissed me, and it is not even in his nature to dismiss me. He just can’t. Glory to God because where am I going without him? Where? To the father of lies who wants to get the best part of me, destroy it and eventually want me to go and suffer with him at the end of time. Not an option! In Jesus Name. aki Jesus pray for me. What I am saying is I love that God is patient with me and that is the testimony I have seen with my own eyes.
The other reason that I love about God is one I have mentioned in many of my posts. His kindness which for me shows up as sweetness. Sometimes I’m doing nothing big and impactful like sitting in bed, relaxing and I remember I need something, lo and behold the item is already near me. Or sometimes when I’m out and about and I’m worried about getting parking, and when I get there, there is plenty of parking in exactly the spots that I want. Sometimes a stranger will offer help that I really need or a friend will show their supportiveness in the way that I need and I know that’s just God’s kindness that wants me to smile and knows I need it. Most of the time I didn’t even know that I needed to smile like that so Thank you, Jesus!
Then this God, Sovereign God, Matchless and Powerful has the audacity not to insist on his own way. He lets me chose if I will take his instructions or if I want to do things my way. I have a big birthday coming up and you would think I have mastered the faith of doing things God’s ways because there is guaranteed victory in his name. Me? Oowi! The times I’ve just done things my way knowingly or by default, ha! The lessons I’ve learnt has most of the time been painful, tear filled but thank God, he is still patient with me and because he has plans for good for me, he knows how to turn that episode into one I can still gain victory from! Who does that! And why does he continually do that. Remixing the words of brother Michael Jackson, its just God’s nature.
He can’t help but be patient, kind and a true gentle God who never insists on his way. What I love about this nature of his, is it encourages me to trust him with my life and not have any doubt in a way I don't think I can with any other person and actually I don't want to. If I have him, I have Everything. If I don't have him I have nothing as sister Whitney put it. A lesson he has taught me recently and is one of the many reasons I say he sets me up to win.
Guaranteed he is the one I know who wants me to succeed even more than myself and all my support network combined. What I love about him is that even if I did the worst thing ever, his door, arms, house is open for me to come back when I am ready. And he will wait. He won’t give up. And when I come back, he doesn’t have the capacity to rejoice that I was wrong, and he was right. He welcomes me back with understanding, knowing why I made the poor decision in the first place, again more than I will ever even know.
The best part about this love is that it will never end. Even at the end of time when some of God’s children wouldn’t have made it to eternal life, that love for them will still be present because God is Love. God can not die and so Love can not die. Not only is it eternal love but its unconditional love. Love that transcends everything. From the little I can understand with the limited wisdom a human has, my testimony is that I have seen and felt the love of God and at this point where I feel I have seen and felt it, the truth is I haven’t even come close to getting the binoculars that show me where I need to position myself to then touch the surface of God's amazing love. What an Awesome God. And it doesn’t end there.
When our ancestors disobeyed and had to die, they didn’t die the death that they were supposed to. Jesus with his love that we are yet to understand, made that sacrificial choice, so we can enjoy that eternal love as opposed to dying that complete death. So besides waiting for me, blessing me, setting me up to win in ways that defy human, health, career, etc logic, what I love about God is that he has set this life as a transit/ layover kind of journey.
There’s a place, a beautiful beyond imagination that he has been preparing, where there will be nothing but complete joy that again is beyond our wildest imagination. Many of us are only going to make it purely because of this nature and character of a God whose love fights for us in every way possible and when he fights, he always wins! Hallelujah!
Yes it is good to be loved but when it is the love of this God who fights for you, it is the Greatest and the Best to infinity. Forget endless love that brother Lionel and Sister Diana sang about. That one can even end by the end of the song. But this one of the Sovereign God, who knows and sees everything, there to help you, strengthen you and uphold you with his victorious right hand, his love is Guaranteed to be Everlasting, and is therefore matchless. And I say it again what an Awesome God to even have the privilege to know.
Related Verses
John 3:16, Numbers 23:19, Isaiah 41:10, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8,
Next post: 5/2/2023
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