Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Shauna: I'm Shauna with Joni Eareckson Tada sharing hope. Here's Joni with a special word.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Okay, Shauna, I've got something for our friends to think about, something they'll want to meditate on and chew on over and over, because I've been doing exactly that for years, and I still cannot grasp the enormity of what Jesus is saying here. You can read it in that high priestly prayer that Jesus offers up in John 17. God the Son, that's Jesus, says to God the Father, "You love them," that's us, "even as you loved me." God loves us just like he loves Jesus? The same outpouring of delight and pleasure that God has for his Son, you mean he's got for us? We who believe on him, who are united to him by faith? That's astounding. It's almost too good to be true, but it is true.

God says in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Now friend, if God loves you like that, and he does, he showed it on the cross, you can understand that his love is not bland. It's not theoretical. He doesn't hold his love at an arm's length distance like a contractual love that people just talk about. No, not at all. If God loves us like he loves Jesus, you better believe it's warm-hearted, real, passionate, and brimming with emotion. Sometimes when I cannot sleep and I'm lying there in one paralyzed position for most of the night, I think about these things. I think about this extravagant love of God. I meditate, I chew on it, I ponder how so much mercy, so much love can flood from that awful cross where God's love reached its high point.

This is the stuff I think about lying there in bed. I feel this wonderful affection sparkling up in response, rising in my heart, and I've got to fight back the tears. I find myself loving him in the way that he first loved me, and I am willing to endure any amount of suffering in order to mirror back to him that same warm-hearted affection that he's got for me. But some of us just don't feel that deeply about God. For some believers, it's a lack of heartfelt conviction. For others, the Bible says they've lost their first love.

But this is where Romans chapter 5 verses 3 to 5 show us how to truly grasp, how to get back that love of God. It says, "We rejoice in our sufferings." I know that's hard, but start there. Rejoice in suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance. Keep at it, trust God with those hard things. And endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And then Romans 5 says, "God's love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit."

Just as God the Father pours all his love upon Jesus, he wants to pour his love into your heart, and nothing feels more secure, more delightful. It was Amy Carmichael who said, "There is no need to plead that the love of God would fill our hearts as though he were unwilling to fill us. He is willing as light is willing to flood a room that is open to its brightness. He is willing as water is willing to flow into an empty channel. Love is pressing round us on all sides like air. Cease to resist and instantly love takes possession." Valentine's Day is coming up, so let's show the world the love that God has poured into our hearts. And thanks for listening and loving from all of us at joniradio.org.