Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.** 1 John 4:7-11 (NIV)**
We who profess faith in Christ, do we demonstrate this faith by our love, by our lives and by our deeds? Many desire Jesus as their Savior but as Lord of their lives, well, let’s say we are often not so convinced – particularly when we are walking through circumstances not of our choosing. We often find ourselves looking for a door of escape, Amen?
God often allows His children to walk through the difficult – taking us from strength to strength – to teach us what King Solomon had to learn that all is vanity apart from Him – even what we may perceive as “good”. We can follow any road out that we please - separated from God - and we will end up at the same place getting us nowhere fast and finding us wanting. The world was not made to be our ultimate satisfaction but blessed are those who take refuge in Him. He is the One that will take us from “strength to strength” as we walk through our Valley of Baca’s (tears). He loosens our grips on our attachments to the lesser things of nature in order that we might love Him as our greatest good. He will not be found lazily or coldly or desirous of things above Him. He is to be our sufficiency, our strength, our Pearl of great price. It is never Jesus plus something else. It is always just Jesus.
We are not to measure the love of God by the difficulties we are walking through as He is closest to the shorn lamb and what He allows in the lives of His heirs of mercy is always eventually for our good – even if we have no idea how that could possibly be. There is purpose wrapped in love for the travails of every child of the King. God often sheers away our attachment to lesser goods that we might know and love him as our greatest good and the source of every other good. Earthly portions will not fill an immortal soul – no matter how much we may have, we will still be found wanting. Only God can fill a soul totally and completely and all else is simply “a cherry on top”. Nice but not necessary.
God desires for us to seek Him with our whole heart and soul and mind and not continually fight against His best for our lives. He very often teaches us in the difficult but what we will learn - if we do not fight against Him in the hard rather embrace what He allows - is always something better for us. Remember, the promise of Scripture which tells us in Romans 8:28 (NIV): “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Remember as well, one of the most difficult things to change is the leaning of a human heart. And God is the Master of this. Seth Porch writes: “‘There is something better for you,’” Jesus says, ‘than avoiding the valley of the shadow of death. You will see great hardship because I want you to see the glory of God. I will take you through difficulties you did not expect, that you might behold glory you could not have imagined.’ This is how he loves us.” The highest good is what is best for the soul of man. And that is always Jesus.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us. 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 (NIV)