Come and Returnနမူနာ

Day 6: The Point of All Things

“I will heal their unfaithfulness and love them with all My heart, for My anger has turned away from them.” Hosea 14:4

There are three other words in Greek for love – eros (desire), storge (affection) and philia (friendship). These are very precise words that have a specific meaning.

But when the radically new reality of God and His love came into the world through Jesus, Christians needed a new word for this new kind of love. This love was not one of the three types already in general use and well explored in Greek.

So, the early Christians took the word agape and used it to express the unmistakable type of love seen in Christ and Christians. It is a love so new and revolutionary that John 13:35 says that through this agape love, the world would know that we are His disciples.

The Bible says that God is love. If God is total love, then everything He desires for us must come from His love and be for our good. This is love: the desire for the well-being of the loved one. And if God of pure love is also all-powerful and can do anything He wants, then all things that happen to me must work together for my ultimate good.

God is love embodied. Love is the essence of God – it is what He is made of. He created all things from His essence. All creation materials were spoken from His heart, from His essence. The stars, the sun, the moon, the heavens, the oceans, the earth, the galaxies, the animals, the dust He used to create the human body - they were all created by what came out of His mouth, from His essence.

Solomon wrote the Book of Songs, which says that nothing compares to the love of the King. In Ecclesiastes, he says that everything is vanity. Solomon understood the greatness and power of God's love so well that all successes and failures, all beauty and misery, power and inability are all vanity—worthless and futile.

The purpose of everything is love. From the perspective of heaven and God's entire story, from beginning to end, the goal is love.

When someone rejects this love, catastrophic consequences occur because the entire universe is violated. But as long as you have the breath of life, there is still hope of return, and the arms of Jesus welcome you with all love.

My Prayer:

Father, I recognize that You are with me now, even if I don't feel or recognize Your presence. Help me understand His love for me. Open my eyes to see things the way You see them. Everything You do is for a purpose. Holy Spirit, help me hear what Jesus wants to reveal to me. If the point of all things is love, I need to live my life with that understanding. All my circumstances, all my past experiences, everything I bring from my lineage, I bring to the Cross of Jesus. I thank You that You are making me into something beautiful that will demonstrate Your love to those around me. I will not reject Your love. In submission, I return. In the name of Jesus, Amen.