What Gifts of Love Have Influenced You Powerfully? By Sandi Somers

love hand hears by Unsplash

  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27 NIV)

 February is the month devoted to love. Our challenge this month is to consider gifts of love and kindness we’ve received and given.

 Being loved and loving—a missing ingredient in many relationships. Perhaps It begins with misunderstanding God’s love. When we don’t know how much God loves us, our love for others can go awry. We misplace our love with other people or things. We can’t forgive. We harbour bitterness. We feel rejected.

 On the other hand, loving others is a measure of how much we accept and know His love right to the core of our being.

Over this last month the Lord has been impressing on me what his love means, and to love Him and others more deeply, especially in these areas.

 Forgiveness.

A number of years ago, my path met with a former student. As we chatted, I remembered how I had been unnecessarily angry with him when he was in Grade Two. Now I apologized. He gently put his hand on my arm and said, “I don’t remember. I forgive you.” Gratitude and an overwhelming sense of peace filled me. I realized then how transforming forgiveness can be to another person when I offer it.

The speaker David Jeremiah once said, “Forgiveness is always our turn.” Forgiveness doesn’t diminish what was done, nor does it condone. Nor do we glibly forgive without working through the icebergs of hurt, pain, confusion, and voicelessness. When we take responsibility and forgive, our spirit becomes free to love.

Compassion.  

This winter I’ve been praying for a friend who is deeply grieving the deaths of loved ones. The Lord has invited me to enter more into her pain with compassion and empathy. And beyond this, the Lord has impressed on me to open up a tenderness to enter into others’ pain. (For an excellent discussion on compassion, read Alan Anderson’s January blog post here.) 

Valuing others

When I visit my nephew Tobi and his family, I’m greeted at the door by kids who hug me and tell me (all at once) about themselves. I feel valued and affirmed.

Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, was a breakthrough for me. People, he said, feel valued in five different ways: a touch or hug; words of affirmation and appreciation; meaningful gifts; “acts of service”—having someone do something for them; or quality time and attention.  Although the Lord keeps prompting me to give more of my time and availability to others, I’m still very much a work in progress in all of the areas above.  In addition, He is inviting me to “launch out” into the unknown, as I both interact and pray for those God places in my path. As I include more of these facets in my writing, others will know Christ’s love for them, and God will be honoured.   

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Challenge: Who has graced your life with love, and/or whose life have you graced with love?  

Thought: God loves us infinitely more than we can dream or imagine. Demonstrate that love as Paul loved his people: “How much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8, NLT).

Your Secret Admirer– by Ramona Heikel

I love the tradition of giving Valentines, and was delighted in elementary school when we celebrated Valentine’s Day. What a sweet way of confirming your special friendship and love to particular people in your class. It was so exciting to know that a classmate liked you well enough to make you a red construction-paper heart—maybe even adding a white lace doily—with their handwritten message on the back. Of course, since it was heartbreaking for some students to receive fewer cards than most (or no cards), compassionate teachers started requiring that you gave a Valentine to everyone. But even then, you could reserve your biggest or best Valentine for your favorite friends.

Then came the idea of signing the card as “Your Secret Admirer”. Ooh, how exciting! If someone didn’t want to sign their name, they surely must have extra-strong feelings of love that went beyond friendship. I remember how disappointed I was when Bruce, a boy I had a crush on, signed his name “From Bruce” on his valentine to me. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to get an unforced store-bought card from him, because at least he considered me one of his many friends. But if I’d gotten a card from a Secret Admirer, I would have hoped that it had been from Bruce, and been thrilled at the possibility that I was significant to him.

Lately I have been noticing in the Old Testament how deep and constant God’s love is for the nation of Israel, no matter how often they ignore and reject him. I am reminded that there was a time that I wasn’t aware of God or his love. I was fifteen when I heard the message that God loved me. Before that, I believed that God loved “the world” as one big round object, with all of our faces blurred, and him not knowing or caring what our names were. This new revelation, that the far away creator of the universe knew me, and wanted me to know him personally, changed everything.

As I got older I began to see how even before I was aware of him, he was giving me gifts, Valentines signed “Your Secret Admirer”. One example of his gifts is my best friend, who I got to know in fourth grade. From then on, she has been my constant, loyal friend, and I now realize she was also my assurance that I was loved, and lovable through many confusing, bleak years. It wasn’t until tenth grade that we both heard the gospel at a high school Campus Life meeting and put our faith in Jesus. Yet during all those previous years, God was giving us little Valentine reminders of his desire to walk with us.

You have a secret admirer, too. And if he’s not so secret and you already know who he is, do you realize that he is your admirer, your friend who loves you constantly? Or do you feel, like I did, that you’re just a nameless, faceless, insignificant part of a big world that God loves? Or that his favorite hobby is catching you failing and sinning? Consider how God spoke about his admiration of Job in Job 1:8; think about the individualized “whoever” in John 3:16; look at his longing to always be with us wherever he is, in John 14:1-3; and read the scriptures that talk about his love, how he first loved us, in 1 John 4:7-19.


(These are Valentines from Bruce and another friend Katie from my grade school scrapbook.)


Posted by Ramona
www.happilywriting.com