Extreme Love: discover and experience God's love for you

[Lily]

BESET WITH LOVE

HANNAH WHITALL SMITH

Thou hast beset me behind and before,
and laid thine hand upon me.
PSALM 139:5 KJV

We are told in our Psalm that God besets our path. Some of us know what it is to be intruded upon by unwelcome and unpleasant people. Perhaps we never have thought that God besets us. He loves us so that He cannot leave us alone. Neither coldness nor rebuffs on our part can drive Him away. Yes, it is gloriously true!

Moreover, He besets us behind as well as before, just as a mother does. She goes after her children and picks up all they have dropped and clears away all the litter they have left behind them. We mothers begin this in the nursery with the blocks and playthings, and we go on with it all our lives long. We are seeking continually to set straight that which our children have left crooked behind them. Often it is at the cost of much toil and trouble, but always with a love that makes the toil and trouble nothing in comparison to caring for the children we love.

What good mother ever turned away the poor little tearful darling who came with a tangled knot for her unraveling or refused to help the eager, rosy boy to unwind his kite strings? Suppose it has been their own fault that the knots and tangles have come; still her love can sympathize with and pity the very faults themselves. All this and more does our God do for us from our earliest infancy, long even before we know enough to be conscious of it, until the very end of our earthly lives.


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You

 

[Lily]

LOVE ACROSS THE AGES

CHARLES FINNEY

For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
JOHN 3:16 KJV

Long before He formed a moral universe, He knew perfectly what it must cost Him to redeem sinners, and He knew that the result would amply justify all the cost. He knew that a wonder of mercy would be wrought—that the suffering demanded of Christ, great as it was, would be endured—and that results infinitely glorious would accrue therefrom.

He looked down the track of time into the distant ages—where there might be seen the joys of redeemed saints, who are singing their songs and striking their harps anew with the everlasting song, and was not this enough for the heart of infinite love to enjoy?

When you come to see Him face-to-face and tell Him what you think of it—when you are some thousands of years older than you are now—will you not adore that wisdom that manages this scheme, and the infinite love in which it had its birth.

God wants volunteers to help on this great work. God has given Himself, and given His Son, and sent His Spirit. More laborers still are needed. What will you give? Say not, “I have nothing to give.” You can give yourself—your eyes, your ears, your hands, your mind, your heart, all. How many young men are ready to go? And how many young women? Whose heart leaps up, crying, “Here am I! Send me!”?


Extreme Love: Discover and Experience God’s Love for You