IMMEASURABLE LOVE

“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” (Romans 8:39).

David Jeremiah wrote in his devotional (10-2-12):

A famous consumer company’s advertising campaign, beginning in 1975, used the tagline, “Don’t Leave Home Without Them” for 25 years — referring to the company’s travelers checks. When the credit card replaced travelers checks, the phrase was changed slightly to say, “Don’t Leave Home Without It” — referring to the plastic credit card that replaced checks for travelers.

You might leave home today without a credit card in your pocket, but there is one thing you can never leave home without: the presence of God. The psalmist David wrote an entire psalm (Psalm 139) about the fact that God was always with him. And the prophet Jonah discovered he couldn’t escape God even when he tried. If you can’t escape God’s presence that means you can’t escape God’s love either — because God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Some people think their sins or failings have put them far away from the reach of God and His love, but that is never true. God and His love are always with you.

 No matter who you are, where you are, or what happens to you, no one can ever be lost to His love, even though the full measure of God’s love is beyond our understanding.   No matter how great our suffering, our trials—no calamity can take us beyond the reach of God’s shoreless ocean of love for us.

He created us and He loves us unconditionally.  Everyone matters to God—even the unlovely and those who may feel unlovable.   Our “self-worth,” our value, comes from the fact that we are important to Him.  Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8) and, if He loves us that much, who cares what others think?

 The words of the hymn “The Love of God” attempts to capture the breathtaking magnitude of God’s love:

Could we with ink the ocean fill

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill

And ev’ry man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Tho stretched from sky to sky. –Frederick M. Lehman

 Even if the ocean were filled with ink, as this verse says, using it to describe the love of God would drain it dry.