Choose Love (13 page)

Beside that powerful verse from 2 Timothy above, Psalm 34 has always been my go-to place in the Bible when I need God’s Word to quickly take away fear and insecurity. The entire psalm is an encouragement. A fixer of the heart. A readjustment of the attitude.

In these verses David vows to worship God continually and invites others to do the same
.
He said
.
“
I sought the L
ORD
, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears
” (Psalm 34:4). David chose to seek God, and God answered by delivering him from every fear he had.

Just reading that psalm gives me peace in my heart. I know it will do the same for you as well.

God Promises Us the Crown of Life When We Resist Temptation

God knows we cannot be perfect, so He asks us to look to Him for strength to stand strong against any temptation to violate His ways for our life.

God promises to enable us to do things we cannot do without Him, but we have to declare our dependency upon Him
.
When we do, there are rewards for living His way
.

James, the brother of Jesus, said, “
Blessed is the man who endures temptation
; for when he has been approved,
he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him
” (James 1:12).

The crown of life is no small thing. This verse is talking about when we are in heaven with the Lord. There are rewards in eternity we will forfeit if we continue to allow ourselves to fall into temptation instead of resisting it. We all have access to the power and strength to resist temptation when it comes if we run to God at the first inkling of it and depend on
His
strength and power to do so.

That means when we go through hard times—and we don’t lose faith and end up doing something stupid or faithless or selfish—the experience will cause us to depend on God so completely we will see that we need nothing else but Him.

James said, “
Count it all joy
when you fall into various trials, knowing that the
testing of your faith produces patience
. But let patience have its perfect work,
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing
” (James 1:2-4).

If we recognize the testing of our faith when temptation presents itself and we run to God, we can have joy in the process of resisting the enemy of our soul. If we depend on God to work in us and perfect us, we will see that everything we need can be found in Him.

The sooner we learn that, the better off we will be.

God Promises That You Have a Good Future Ahead

Because God loves you, He promises you hope and a good future. Listen to what He says about you in His Word.

I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the
L
ORD
, thoughts of peace and not of evil,
to give you a future and a hope
. Then you will call upon Me, and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And
you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:11-13)
.

God promises to us a great future with Him, but we must seek Him and search for Him with our whole heart. When we don’t do that, He shows love for us in His discipline and correction. It means He loves us enough to care how we turn out. “For whom the L
ORD
loves He chastens” (Hebrews 12:6). He said, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten” (Revelation 3:19).

In addition to the promises that reveal His love to us all the time, ask God to demonstrate the ways He shows His love to you personally. Has He spared you from something? Connected you with people you need to know? Put beauty in your path in amazing ways? Answered your prayers? Worked something out for good? Enabled you to recover? Helped you through a tough time? Spoken to your heart? Given you a sense of His presence? Gifted you with unexpected peace in the midst of crisis? Surprised you with joy? Spared you from something bad? Met you at your greatest point of need? Provided for you unexpectedly? Shown you things in His creation that have delighted you?

Whatever it is, thank God for His love whenever you see or remember it. Tell Him how much His love means to you. Ask Him to enable you to recognize and receive His love for you in every way. For it is the love of God you receive that will affect how you express your love for Him—and how consistently you show love to others.

Prayer of Love

L
ORD
, thank You that Your Word promises to those in need that “in the days of famine” we will “be satisfied” (Psalm 37:19). I don’t have to fear not having enough, and I can trust that because You are my Lord, I will not want for anything (Psalm 23:1). Thank You that You have a place of rest for me where there is fruitful abundance (Psalm 23:2). Thank You that You will not withhold any good thing from those who live Your way (Psalm 84:11).

Many of the promises in Your Word assure me that You will provide for me—all because You love me. I know Your ways are perfect and You have proven Your Word time after time. I know You will always be a shield to me because I trust in You (Psalm 18:30). Thank You that “
You have been a shelter for me, a strong tower from the enemy
. I will abide in Your tabernacle forever; I will trust in the shelter of Your wings” (Psalm 61:3-4). “I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; for You alone, O L
ORD
, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8).

Thank You, Lord, that You are “a God near at hand” and “not a God afar off ” (Jeremiah 23:23). “You have also given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great” (Psalm 18:35). “You, O God, have heard my vows; You have given me the heritage of those who fear Your name” (Psalm 61:5). “You have put gladness in my heart” (Psalm 4:7). Help me to recognize Your love for me in Your Word and in all the ways You reveal Your love for me every day.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Words of Love

Show Your marvelous lovingkindness by Your right hand, O You who save those who trust in You from those who rise up against them.

P
SALM
17:7

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

1 J
OHN
4:18

We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

R
OMANS
8:28

The L
ORD
will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

P
SALM
42:8

Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in Your truth.

P
SALM
26:3

7

Know What God’s Love Will Do in Your Life

I
f God is love and God is everywhere, that means we are surrounded by His love at every moment. Why, then, don’t we always feel it? It’s because the degree to which we sense God’s love for us depends on our
expectation of
Him and our
response to
Him.

Some people accept God’s love wholeheartedly the moment they have an understanding of who He is and what He has done. Others are slower to open up to Him. They don’t
expect
Him to love them the way He does, so they don’t respond to His hand on their life with complete trust.

For example, one woman I have been friends with for decades was a hundred percent sold out to God as soon as she gave her life to Jesus and never looked back. She received His love completely and didn’t doubt it for a moment. I saw this with my own eyes and was always amazed. And then I had another close friend who received the Lord but could never fully accept that He loved her.

I knew both of them for years, and they were not extreme cases of great or little faith, yet what was the difference between them? After talking with countless women about this very subject over the years, I believe these two friends actually represent many more people than we realize.

The first friend, who loved the Lord and received His love immediately, came from a very loving family. Their care and affection for one another was clear and unmistakable. Unfortunately, she experienced great tragedy in her life when both of her parents were killed in a car accident. But even though she was just a young woman at that time and had to take on the role of a parent for her young sister and brother, I have never seen anyone so fully committed to the Lord and who received His love as thoroughly as she did. I believe that because she had
been
loved and
felt
loved, she knew how to
receive
love.

The second friend had been raised by a seriously alcoholic mother and a father in denial. Her hurts were deep and she never felt loved. I led her to the Lord a year after I received Him myself, and although she loved God she had a hard time believing He loved
her
. She read the Bible. She prayed and went to church, yet she could not receive His healing love completely. She married a man who was unloving and unaffectionate because of his own loveless childhood. She died not many years later, and I believe her unmended broken heart weakened her so that she did not have the strength to recover when she became ill. She did not love herself and could never fully believe God loved her either. She didn’t find the healing and wholeness God had for her because she had no expectations about His restoring love on her behalf. Therefore, her response to Him was, at best, weak.

As for me, I was somewhere in between those two. I felt unloved as a child. I felt unloved as an adult. But when I received the Lord, I felt His love in the church, in the pastor’s office with my friend where I received Him, and in the believers around me. I believed God was the God of love, but I didn’t fully believe He really loved
me
. I sensed His love from others, but I thought of it as more of an overflow from those who actually were, in fact, loved.

Though it took awhile to truly believe God loved
me
, I did get there eventually. It took trusting His Word to be a love letter to me. And it took a lot of prayer—alone with God as well as praying
together with others. (More about this kind of healing in the following chapters.)

There is so much God wants to do in each of our lives, but all of that will be hindered as long as we don’t trust His love for us. We will never view His love correctly until we understand Him. Unless we understand that God is love and we look for manifestations of His love in His Word and in our life, we won’t recognize them as such, and so we will not rest in His love as we should.

It’s important to know what God’s love can and will accomplish in you. There are wonderful things He does, and
can
do, and
will
do in all of us. If we open up to His love working in us and receive it fully, communicate often with Him in prayer, receive from Him daily in His Word, and ask Him to reveal His love to us and help us choose to believe Him, then we will grow in His love every day and be able to receive all He has for us.

Be on the lookout for the healing and restoring work of God’s love in you. His love is there for you because
He
is there for you.

What follows are just a few examples of how God’s love will work in you that need to be kept in your mind.

God Will Calm the Storms in You and in Your Life

The storms in me were unending until I surrendered myself to the Lord at what was—and I am sure always will be—the lowest point in my life. When I received the Lord, I had no idea how much I was really receiving. It was a process to learn and understand it all.

When I went for Christian counseling and the counselor, Mary Anne, prayed for me, I was set free of the depression, anxiety, and deep sadness I had lived with for as long as I could remember. I felt the physical manifestation of those things being lifted off of my shoulders, and I was undeniably different afterward.

At that time I asked Mary Anne if I should change my name from Stormie to something normal because I never liked being
teased about it growing up. I always wanted a simple name like everyone else that no one would make fun of or question.