So there is this holiday today called Valentine’s Day. This is one I sit out due to not being married and not having a girlfriend. However, I do wish all of my readers a Happy Valentine’s Day. A few fun interactions with friends from other countries coming your way in this post.
My friends Diego and Camila from Brazil come to my Sunday morning group. Valentine’s Day in Brazil is June 12th. Sunday morning I asked Camila if she wanted to celebrate V-Day on Feb, 14th or June 12th. Camila answered- BOTH.
My friends Gregory and Bogdana from Ukraine are happy because Gregory got his first job in America. When they shared that with me Saturday morning, I encouraged Gregory with, “now that you are working, she can go shopping more.”
On a serious note, romantic love celebrated on Valentine’s Day is temporary. The love that is eternal is God’s love for us. God’s love for us is unconditional as Romans 5:8 says:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And as Romans 8:38-39 tells us:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing can take God’s love from us.
So whatever situation we are in, married, single, divorced, widowed, there is a love that is eternal that we can celebrate every day- God’s love.
With all of the activity during Christmas time, the parties, the programs, the shopping, a person could lose focus on what we are actually celebrating during Christmas. Jesus spoke of it himself in John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus spoke of the ultimate expression of love in 15:13:
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Love is what we are celebrating, the love of God in sending Jesus. The love of Jesus coming to sacrifice himself to become our Savior.
Is it possible to celebrate his love without all of the holiday trappings?
Most definitely, We can put actions behind those words-“For God so loved….” It doesn’t have to be some grand gesture. We can do things like help someone be able to do Christmas shopping for their children. We can take someone who is struggling in life out for coffee and listen. We can help someone to buy food for their Christmas dinner. Imagine the impact behind putting into action the love of Jesus while sharing why we are doing it. For me it is blessing refugee families.
Celebrate God’s love by showing his love for me is the best way to celebrate Christmas.
Jesus loved us first. He showed his great love for us when he died for us and defeated death for us even though we did not deserve it. He brings healing into our souls, spirits, and lives.
Our love for Jesus is finite and a response to his eternal unconditional love for us. Jesus calls us to love one another with the love of God- God’s unconditional love. We can only love with that kind of love through the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Yesterday the pastor of my church taught about what it means that God is love as it says in 1 John 4. It was a wonderful message. The message basically was:
God is love means that love is part of God’s core being. He doesn’t love because of what we do, who we are, or anything else. He loves because it is part of who he is.
When we come to God, our motives are not pure. We do not bring anything to the table that God needs. God does not need anything from us, but he loves us because it is part of who he is.
We bring to God our failures, our sins, our struggles, our depression, our anxiety, our illness, our doubts. our mess. God loves us. Not because of what we do or who we are. He loves us because he loves us.
I love this video by Laura Story. The lyrics of the song so beautifully express the truth of how God loves us even though we are a mess. I hope the song blesses you as you start your week. 🙂
I want to thank Jodie of cutthechronic.com for nominating me for Share Your Passion. I like Jodie’s blog because she is my fellow chronic illness warrior and she shares about living life in a way that chronic illness does not defeat her. 🙂
I like the Share Your Passion Tag because it encourages us to stir one another unto to good works 🙂
The goal of the #ShareYourPassion Tag, created by https://absolutelytrueconfessions.com, is for bloggers to uplift other bloggers and inspire their readers. Bloggers who are tagged are encouraged to talk about their passions outside of blogging, and how to use those passions to help others. Love this!
Rules of the #ShareYourPassion Tag:
Repost the #ShareYourPassion logo (above) on your acceptance post.
Tag the blogger’s site that nominated you.
Share a bit about your passion(s): Hobbies outside of blogging that keep you busy in your free time. What would you like to accomplish with these things? How could you use your passion(s) to be a blessing to others and show them the love of God?
Nominate ten other bloggers and spread the joy!
A big passion for me is learning about and relating to people from diverse cultures. That has led to a hobby of mine which is to learn how to greet people in their languages. I have learned how to greet people in 30 languages. For one people group, that has been significant for them
The Yazidi people are from the Middle East. They have been living under oppression for centuries because they are not part of the majority religion there. Genocide has been committed against them 74 times over the centuries most recently five years ago.
I make it my habit to walk around the college where I teach in the evenings and greet the Yazidi students by saying- Hi, how are you my friend/Choeknee Havalimah- to try to make them feel welcome. I have been in the homes of many Yazidi friends and shared God’s love with them.
A newer passion of mine has been to try to be an advocate for Mental Health issues and also Chronic Illness. I have a few chronic illnesses and a symptom of both of them is depression. My hope is that by sharing my experience and how Jesus has helped me, it will encourage others. I believe that if God comforts me it is not just for me, it is so I can in turn comfort others such as 2 Corinthians 1 says:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
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