Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Knowing God’s Love: Growing in Faith in the Father’s Kindness
(Re-Release: Formerly Titled ‘If Only You Knew His Love’)

When I look back on my life—when I see what is currently unseen—when I see Jesus face to face—when all has been revealed…

I am convinced I will be BLOWN AWAY by the love I never realized He truly had for me.

God’s Care for Every Living Thing

The Bible says, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” (Matthew 6:26)

Yesterday, I was at the park, watching birds flitting around, this way and that. And yet, the God of the universe cares for them. So much so, He FEEDS the birds!

If He cares so deeply for the birds, how much more does He care for you and me?

God Is Intimately Involved in Your Life

He is feeding you. He is clothing you. He is providing far more than you may realize.

And He is intimately aware of your life and what you’re going through.

In both the joys and the suffering of life, God remains good. There is so much we cannot see, and yet He is in control. 

Even in suffering, His purposes are higher than ours, and His plans are always good. He allows suffering for His reasons, only He can see.

Trusting God Through Pain and Suffering

Suffering is hard. It hurts. Deeply. But when we trust that every good gift in our lives comes from Him, it changes how we endure the hard times.

Instead of despair, we can face suffering with peace, joy, and contentment. This shift allows us to fulfill at least part of the purpose God has for our pain.

God Cares About Your Pain

Make no mistake—God sees your suffering. He knows your struggles, whether they are rejection, loneliness, or unmet needs in your closest relationships.

God cares about the pain in your marriage. He cares about the lack of intimacy, warmth, or connection. He sees the ache in your soul. And He cares.

His Goodness Never Fails

Even in the hardest moments, God is good. He loves you so much that He’s willing to risk you turning away from Him because He has a bigger plan for your life.

As Isaiah 55:9 reminds us, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

We don’t have to understand His reasons. But we are called to trust His goodness.

Every Good Gift Is From God

If God feeds the birds, how much more is He doing for us every day? 

He makes each breath happen and every movement possible. Every smile from your child, every sunset you see, every heartbeat you experience—these are His gifts. 

He knit you together in your mother’s womb, and He continues to sustain you every moment of every day. He is still designing, directing, and causing all these things to go well for us.

When we take the time to notice, we see His hand in everything good. Even in suffering, when something breaks, it reminds us of all the days He allowed it to thrive.

Soak in the Truth of His Love

If we truly understood His love, if we only soaked in the truth of His love, we would trust Him more easily, even in the midst of pain.

If we only knew His love…

If we only knew His love…

If we only knew His love…

May you know the love of Christ today. 

And may I know it, too.

Love,

 

Belah & Team

PS – If you’re experiencing any of the kind of suffering mentioned above, we would love to chat with you. Feel free to schedule a call with us or take our free Marital Health Assessment online to learn about your Marital Health Score.

PPS – Here is a quote from a recent graduate:
“I have grown in patience, perspective, my faith and connection with God, my understanding of my husband, and peace. I have learned how to build my marriage. Building it is now a journey and no longer an intense, overwhelming mission impossible.

Change starts with me – God can only save my marriage if I am humble enough to surrender and let Him start with ME!!!! I was the barrier. I was stopping the flow and the blessings from coming because I was out of alignment. I needed to lower my head and heart in order to see and watch God do what only He could do in our family and in us.

Biggest takeaway from this whole course is the GOD FACTOR. Belah always pointed us to Jesus, NOT to a strategy or an idea or concept. It was directly and purely to JESUS. He was the main focus and everything else just fell into place. It helped me to re-center everything in my life.”

Episode Transcript:

Belah Rose  0:02  

Belah, welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me. Bela rose, as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truths about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. Delight your marriage.

Hi, I I am so compelled to share this, and a lot of times the episodes I record, it’s because I feel that the listener needs to hear this, and today’s episode, I think I need to hear, and I need to process out loud, and I’m really just doing it for me, and if it blesses you and draws you closer To the Lord, then I’m gonna post it so there’s no action step after this episode. I’m not going to tell you to go sign up for this or do that or whatever. No, you’re very smart. If you decide you want more, you could go to our website, but I am just wanting you to hear what’s on my heart from the Lord. Because I think when I articulate what God is doing in me, it goes deeper inside of me. I think there’s that scripture that says, from the heart the mouth speaks something like that.

And I think when I speak something out loud, it goes deeper in me. So I’m recording this on a Wednesday, which I don’t do anything before midday, aside from spend time with Jesus and try to listen and try to be quiet and try to just journal what’s on his heart and seek him and try to focus. Now, all of these I do imperfectly, very imperfectly, but those are all my tries. I try to realign and re focus and redirect and ask God to help me in all of those things. And of course, this morning I got a little distracted, because, of course, I had to kiss my husband, and he hadn’t brushed his teeth, and so I had to wait for that,

and then, but we hiked and kissed, and it was spectacular. Here’s what’s on my heart. Here’s the phrase,

if you only knew his love, if you only knew his love, i

Yeah, I’m continuing to read some apologetics material to my boys as they’re young, and I want them to have solid reasons that they believe because they’re out there, There’s lots of reasons. So if you grew up in a Christian environment and you just kind of had faith because that’s what your preacher had and your parents had, and you may be at a spot of, like, I don’t really have reasons behind it, there’s, there are lots of resources sources that have those reasons. So you can bolster your faith in that. But I’m really enjoying this process of helping my boys have those sorts of things I read to them at night, these these resources. Because what I love about it is it really starts from ground zero.

Why do we believe there is, even is a God. And there’s a lot of really cool reasons, but one that I’m, I’m really compelled by recently is the fact that people innately know what is good and what is evil. There’s, there is some sort of innate ability to discern that. And when people say, I can’t believe in God, because why would he permit evil in the world? Well, the fact that there is something that we all, in principle, everyone who isn’t just. OsIo path or a psychopath. We all have a baseline around the world of what that there is evil. Maybe we have a tweaked version of, this is evil, or this is evil, but we all have this concept of evil.

You know, even wars that are that are atrocious, things that are committed. It’s out of this. Well, you did it to me. So this is retribution or other things. I mean, there’s that is definite evidence of God, of a being that designed us to have a good and an evil. I mean, there’s lots of there’s lots more there, but there’s a passage in the Bible that I happened upon, and haven’t happened upon it since, but it specifically says this phrase, that God feeds the birds. God feeds the birds. Now this isn’t the part of the Bible where Jesus says, even a bear, a sparrow like Don’t be anxious about anything, because even a sparrow who’s sold for a couple of pennies when it falls to the ground, God knows it completely. That’s not actually what I mean.

This is a different part of the Bible, but it says God’s God feeds the birds. And as I was sitting out in the park today watching the birds, there were a lot of birds, and one’s flying this way and one’s flying that way, and what, and they’re all, I mean, honestly, looking for food. And then they find it, and they get on the ground and they start pecking at it. And I was just like, God, do you really feed the birds? Is that? Is that who I’m speaking to the God who feeds the birds and the one who planted the garden before Adam and Eve got there. I think that’s even what it says in the Bible. He planted it like, do you do those things? God? Is that who I’m talking to? Is that who I’m approaching? Because when I see the Bible, it sure seems that way. We’re not talking about a God who was far from us.

We’re talking about a God who is intimately in everything we experience, every wind, every sunset, every flower, every tree, every plant. He is doing this. He is intimately involved in his creation. He allows my heart to beat. He causes it to beat for 10 months in my mother’s womb. He knit me together. What does that mean? It means that he knows how my capillaries work. It’s probably the only thing I remember from high school biology. That’s not true. That’s not true. I wish I could reference my science teacher’s name. I loved her. What was her name? I don’t remember, but she was wonderful. The point is, whatever you know about the human body, God knit you together. He did that,

and he didn’t stop. He’s still he’s still giving you breath. He’s still making sure your blood cells flow through your veins. He’s all up in there. But it’s like we, we get so tied into this mindset of, I do. I should just speak for myself, I get so tied into this mindset of, God is, you know, I think that’s probably why it’s so helpful to in my very limited understanding of God, helpful to define God in three parts, Jesus, who is the human that came to Earth, died, sacrificed himself. Lived a perfect life, and then for my sins, so that I could approach God and have communion with Him.

And then the Holy Spirit who is in me, who teaches me, who guides me, who comforts me and helps me. And God, the Father, Who is my father, who who is totally other and more And all of these things and but the thing is, it’s so that’s such a limited mindset of who God is, and when I think about if I only knew how much he loved me, if I only knew that he takes his time to encounter me, if I only knew that every good thing comes from above, even the good things I don’t take The time to notice that I’m not even aware that I didn’t trip down the stairs and he caught me before I even stumbled. That I only if I only knew how that dangerous person who may have been a sociopath, was blind to me walking by, if I only knew the way he saves me over and over again, if I only knew the way he made sure that I happened upon that book that prevented me from going out and harming someone else with

My incorrect way of thinking, If I only knew how much he loves me, if I only knew that that he was willing to possibly risk me turning away from him by allowing something to happen to me so that I might grow, so that I might become more, and the risk that that I could turn away from Him, through Him allowing that negative thing to happen, that it is out of His love, that he does such things if I only knew his love, if I only knew, if I only knew. And the interesting thing about evil is and the interesting thing about faith and the interesting thing about God is there will be a day that I will understand.

But what I know right now is that the things that are real, the things are that are eternal, are not seen, but the things that are temporary, those are the things that are seen right now. That’s what I know from Scripture. I know that the things that I can see right now are temporary. And so if somebody is suffering and it rocks my faith, the thing is, what I see of the suffering is temporary, but eventually it’s eternal rewards or consequences. That’s the eternal thing. That’s where it’s actually faith.

If I only knew, because one day I’ll know, and I’ll look back and I’ll say, Lord, you are really good, you’re way you’re way more good, you’re way gooder whatever the word phrase is, you’re way better than I could have ever imagined. You are so good. My words are, are tiny. They’re, they’re, they’re tiny compared to the depth of your love and goodness to me and the other billions of people who have ever lived. How is it possible that you are so good? I will see that one day, I will be able to witness the goodness of God, His faithfulness, that he never stops loving, that his love is so much deeper and wider and truer than I could have imagined. I will get to that spot to find out. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord.

No wonder, no wonder his anger is so immense, because he’s that good. He’s that good. He. Really sacrifices it all he really does to a degree we have no clue. One day we will and we’ll go, Oh, I’m not worthy. Oh, I was so selfish, self centered, immature, ignorant. Unwilling to see hard hearted. Oh, Lord have mercy that that will be natural, because we’ll find out. We’ll find out how really good he is, how really good he is, no matter the suffering you’ve been through in your marriage, in your intimacy, in the ways you haven’t been loved well, you will find out he has been good. You will find out he has been so good to you.

And you will find out that that suffering mattered and you couldn’t have known, then you could not have known, then all we can do is have faith that it mattered. Maybe you’ll find out that it mattered on this side of eternity. Maybe you never will, maybe I never will, but it matters one day we’ll see one day we’ll find out that had I not gone through that suffering, that person would never have XYZ became who they were meant to be, followed Jesus, in that way, became a believer. We don’t know. We don’t know. Here’s what I do know, what we do matters. What we do matters the way we approach life matters. It impacts other people, whether we ever see it or not, it impacts them.

And I am so far from having this thing figured out, I feel like, you know, I I meditate on this scripture. I pray that God would help me with it. I write things, I I try and I do it wrong a lot. I do it wrong a lot, and when I hear somebody do it better than me in certain ways, I’m just like, oh, Lord, help me. Help me. And sometimes I feel I feel sad. I feel sad about how I’ve done it wrong for so long and how I’ve missed that mark, and maybe it’s too late for me or my kids or whomever I need or should have impacted. Maybe it’s just too late to go back and fix what I did wrong, and sometimes it is, for example, I’ll never see that person at the airport again that I was disrespectful to. I’m grateful I didn’t have a shirt that says I love Jesus, because I think that would have pushed them away from Jesus. But I can pray for them.

I can ask God for forgiveness and and he is faithful, and he can comfort that person, and he can use my sin to possibly turn them closer to Jesus. I don’t know. I don’t know how he could do that, but somehow he could do that, and maybe God allowed that situation so that he could remind me that I still have thorns in my flesh, and I still can hurt people if I’m not prayed up, doing my routines, relaxed silent before the Lord, doing my rest days the way I Should. So maybe it was like, well, thank God it was an airport worker and not your sister, who you can hurt a lot worse than an airport person who’s just like, well, there’s a crazy meanie, which I am sure that’s how I was labeled. But no, I don’t want to be mean to acquaintances or or service folks.

No, I want to love them well too. But maybe God allowed me to see that. Oh, Bella, you still got gaps. You may have figured some things out in your marriage, but listen, you. To continue to surrender to me, cannot go a day without that, even if you’re in the midst of travel. It’s not okay. And he allows those things, just as a brief example of things I’m working on. But Ah, okay, so Psalms 100 was a great Psalm to meditate on. I love this is what really stood out to me, because I was, I was meditating on this portion of Scripture about how he feeds the birds. But then, coupled with Psalm 100 look, get this verse three, know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are his. I love this and so start off with that scripture and say, Lord, thank You for Your word.

Thank you that this is true. Reveal this scripture to me, reveal this truth to me, show me more give me more revelation, Lord. And so as I think about this, I think about it is He who made us and in the Scriptures before Psalm 97 Oh man, I mean The Lord reigns. Let the earth be glad. Let the distant shores rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness around him, righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes. On every side, his lightning lights up the world. The Earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. And then skipping again to Psalms 100 It is He who made us, and we are His. It is He who made me and I am his. It is He that made you, and you are his. You are swimming in a sea of His love.

And you know, have no idea. You have no idea how much he loves you and how much he cares about your suffering. You have no clue. And you may be thinking, Well, this has nothing to do with sex and marriage. I am suffering in sex, sexlessness in my marriage. I’m suffering in the way that my husband treats me and how he rejects Me and is mean to me. I’m suffering in those ways. And those are big sufferings. Those are big sufferings. They’re big and they’re hard and they’re painful. And why does God matter in that suffering? Why does this conversation matter in that suffering?

Here’s why it matters. You have no idea how much he loves you. You have no idea that this suffering in it God is still good, but you will have an idea whether it’s tomorrow or 20 years from now or 50 years from now, when you meet him face to face, you will find out that it mattered. It mattered how you suffered. It mattered that you suffered and there were ramifications to your suffering that you have no idea about. You have no idea about the ramifications of your suffering. It may have been for someone else. It may have been for yourself. It may have been for your spouse. It may have been the way you carried yourself during the suffering that somebody else witnessed, and they turned towards Jesus as a result, and maybe they didn’t turn towards Jesus as a result, until 20 years later, but you were a seed that was sown because of the way you handled your suffering.

But I want you to know, if we don’t trust that God is good in our suffering, we cannot handle our suffering well. We cannot suffer well. You. People, if we doubt God’s goodness, we cannot use a suffering in the way or we wait. We may not be able to, let me clarify, we may not be able to use the suffering in the ways that God wants. To use it if we do not handle our suffering with God, you are good and you are faithful in this. I don’t know how, but God, you feed the birds, you feed, and you care, and you take care of your creation, and I am that creation. I am that creation. I am not only someone you created when I was born, but every day, every moment of my life, you sustained me, God, every moment of my life.

You are that big. You are that big. God is not little. He is not he is that big. The only way life makes sense is if there is a God that is that big, and guess what? That’s who we serve. That’s who we serve is the God that is that big, so big that he sustains you every single day. He is that all up in your business. He cares that much about the movements of your heart. He has never not been concerned about you and your suffering, and maybe you have been in a sexless marriage for a long time. He has always cared. He designed you to be filled up in that way, and he cares that you have suffered. Yes, he has permitted it. I don’t know why, either, but I do know God is good, and I do know that he is sad with you. This was not his best. This is a result of the fall we live in a broken world.

And you know the spouse that has permitted suffering because maybe she has rejected you. Maybe she has been so concerned with her own insecurities that she’s never let you see her. She’s never allowed her self to be in vulnerable situations that would really speak to your heart. She’s never allowed herself to pursue her own pleasure, because she has never dealt with the agony of her past because somebody has harmed her. Somebody has has abused her in some way. No, God’s not okay with that. He’s not okay that somebody hurt her. She has gone through a suffering, and she’s doing whatever the best she can to deal with that in whatever ways she is. It’s a suffering all of us are dealing with sufferings.

We all are in our own ways. Maybe she dealt with her suffering way back when, in a way that harmed her relationship with the Lord harmed her perspective of who the Lord was, and so she’s unable to approach him again, at least at this season. But God is good. We cannot undermine our belief in who God is based on a person’s behavior, whether that’s a friend, a preacher, a pastor, or our spouse, God is still good. God still loves you. We do not know the extent of his love, but if you do not trust him in the midst of your suffering, in the midst of the trial, in the midst of the tough seasons, maybe long seasons, if we do not trust him in the midst we undermine the very purposes that he has for them.

I don’t say these things because they’re easy to say or to live out or to actually believe, but one day we’ll get there and we’ll say, Oh, of course, my goodness, of course. Now I see now. It makes sense, right? Now, we’re looking into a mirror dimly. We have no clue about what’s really happening. We have no clue we’re looking. At this, this darkened view of what’s actually going on.

We have no idea what God is doing on the other side, because he feeds the birds. He’s not far from us. He is not far from us. He cares about you. He cares about the pain. Whomever you are. He cares you have no idea his love for you. I have no idea his love for me. But if I can trust that the Word of God is true, if I can pursue why it’s true long enough to be like, Oh, this thing is really true, and then I get in there and start meditating on it.

Oh, my goodness, he made me and I am his. He made you and you are his. Did I repeat myself in this episode, yes, I did do. I feel like I need to repeat it to myself 1000 times over. Yes, I do. I do, if I only knew his love. I just think about young men with guns, I just think about if they only knew how much they were loved, there would be no violence if they only knew, if they only knew how much God loved them we were doing. We were doing a discussion with my boys. We just got back from travel, and we are there’s a book called better than before. It’s a book about habits, and one thing she talks about, Gretchen Rubin is how after you come back from a big trip, it’s the perfect time to institute new habits, because it’s kind of like you’re on a fresh slate.

Okay? So one of the habits is eating together as a family. When we were traveling, we kind of got loosey goosey on on how we were doing that. And so once again, we’re eating together as a family every dinner and having a discussion during that time. So my boys are pretty young. They’re like nine and almost nine and seven and half. And so, you know, I try to try to look for good questions online so we can start having conversations that matter and and help them to develop strengths and things around character, and actually hearing what their parents think about certain topics and and they have time and opportunity to articulate their own thoughts and convictions and have an opportunity to discuss those things.

So that’s us starting that process, and actually that was inspired from some mentors and friends of ours who have done that with their kids, and here now their kids are older, and they’re just brilliant, just brilliant and just wonderful humans and and they have strong convictions about things, and it’s because they they really supported an atmosphere of of debate and encouraged that kind of conversation. So anyway, here I am trying to ask questions of my boys that, honestly, I’m wrestling with. So one of the questions was, if you could do anything or change one thing in the world, what would it be? And so one of my sons did a beautiful conversation about how he would love to give all the money from the rich people to the poor people so they wouldn’t be poor and they wouldn’t be suffering. And I just love that answer.

And I was thinking, Yes, that’s going to be my answer, too. And then my other son talked about how if they would just not use hurtful words. And I thought, oh my gosh, yes, because, you know, court for hurtful words is the first thing that happens to a war, right? If we could all just say nicer things to each other, we would stop hating each other, we could apologize to each other, and then we wouldn’t get to a place where we’re killing each other. I thought that’s going to be my answer, too. And then my husband says, you know how he wishes that families could stay together and that they could be loving and kind to each other, in in other, in lots of different ways, he mentioned. And I was like, yes, that would be great, because then all these these kids would not grow up with such terrible surroundings and where the husbands and wives would love each. Other, and they they could love their kids well, because they’re so filled up in their marriages, and we could have good role models of fathers and good role models of wives and mothers, and just like, yes, that’s going to be my answer. And then it got to me, and I just actually could not figure out a good answer.

And I was just like, What in the world? So I kind of went to the well, maybe it would be the money thing, but then that wouldn’t be enough, because you just give them money. That’s not I was like, well, maybe they would, you know, know, God. And I just, I’m trying to give these boys the right answer, but now I’m just like, I’m gonna talk to them today on this, what I’ve settled on, and it’s really knowing His love, like I sometimes I feel very convinced that I have got the right answer. But is it deep in me? Hmm, it’s right, but I don’t know how deep it is. And I feel like God is giving me just a glimpse of revelation today on how deep this truth is knowing His love, if, if, if we, if we knew his love, we could trust in the midst of our suffering.

If we knew his love, we could trust in the midst of someone else’s suffering, if we knew the depth of his love, and it’s not a feeling. I mean, I think I’m feeling the revelation right now, but it’s not. I’m not relying on a feeling. I’m actually relying on the fact that, I mean so many truths and apologetics and again, that just means that it is why Christianity is true. I’m relying on my faith that’s been grounded in sure life experience, but also like intellectual arguments that were morally bankrupt if we don’t believe in God. There’s all sorts of other reasons, but there, there are reasons that atheists lifetime atheists become Christians because science doesn’t make sense without a god.

So I just want to invite you to realize there is a dearth, there is an absence of revelation of God’s love in you and in me. I bet you didn’t know we were so alike. I want more of that. I want more of recognizing and learning and knowing what His love is and singing songs about it, but but actually deeper than that, deeper than that, truer than that, I can say the right things, but do I but, but is it knowing? There’s, there’s two different words for to know in Spanish, and I love this. One is saber, which means, like I know a fact. And one is conocer, which is like I know a person, and honestly, I’m not quite sure which one this should be, but I kind of feel like it should be conocer, because if I only knew as as though I were in relationship With, as though I could hold and define and revel and appreciate the depth, the width, the height, the length, the trueness of His love, if I really got it, not Just as a fact, but like to know, to know His love.

Would it impact me in a greater way? Would it cause me to suffer better? Would it cause me to live my life on a 20 minute by 20 minute check in of like, Oh, I forgot about God for the last 20 minutes. Let me recheck in and re abide with him and to recognize I kind of just got out there in the branches, and I need to get back towards the vine. How do we do this? But if we knew his love, if we knew I can’t breathe without him breathing with me, without him allowing my lungs to expand, if that is the God I serve, then that’s the God I don’t forget. Uh during the day, and remember right before I go to bed and I need to pray with my boys, or remember when I get up to do my quiet time, and I forget once I start logging into my emails.

And do you relate? I’m hoping I relate to you, because this is me. I want to know His love. I want to walk in it. I want to be so assured of it, because that’s not the way I function naturally. I wasn’t raised in that kind of mindset. But I want to know His love. I want to be dependent on it. I was raised in a very independent way, like, as soon as you can do something by yourself, do it, don’t, you know, don’t rely on anyone. You get, get out there and move out as soon as you can, you know, don’t all that kind of stuff and but God wants us to be dependent on him. He wants to be He wants us to be like little children, that that’s actually biblical. And when I think of a baby, I mean, it can’t even eat without being attached to his mom or her mom, like he can’t even eat. It can’t sustain life. For 10 months, it was completely dependent on the mom for feeding. For every bit of nutrients, the baby would not have survived outside of the mom, and then it’s attached, but I’m supposed to be like a baby. I’m supposed to be like a child basking in the mother’s or the Father’s love. If I only knew his love, I would walk differently.

Oh my, the worrying would stop, wouldn’t it? If I only knew that God was so all up in every single thing that happened to me, in every single little bit of, every bit, every all, all of it like, literally, we cannot find something he’s not all up in. He’s God, he’s that big. He’s that able. Somehow, this makes sense, and you may very well never find out most of the stuff. We won’t find out until eternity, most of the stuff, most of the stuff you even have forgotten, that rocked your faith back, way back when you won’t know until eternity. And so I hope for me that I’ve repeated this enough for it could to go deeper in me, but I also hope for you that, yes, you consumed this by listening, but I hope that you’ll repeat it. Maybe you could repeat it with me right now. If I only knew how much he loved me, this would make sense.

I If I only knew how much he loved me, I would agree with this suffering. If I only knew how much he loved me, what’s happening in this situation would make sense to me too. If I only knew how much he loved me, the way people act would be very different if they knew how much he loved them.

God, I trust that you love me, and I want that to be deeper. I want the suffering in my marriage to make sense, because I know you love me, and there is purpose to this suffering. May I pray for you, Lord Jesus. I’m also praying for me. I want to understand your love in a brand new way. I mean, in a in a shout it from the roof tops. This different kind of way, if I only knew, if I only knew, if this one only knew that you even feed them, that you even feed the birds, that what they are facing makes way, way more sense if they got to the other side of eternity and they look back and say, oh, Lord, You were good in that moment. You were faithful in that moment, it was your mercy to allow that suffering.

It was your mercy, it was your grace, it was your love exhibited to me that you allowed me to go through that. And Lord, I ask for a grace for this person to say, Yes. God, yes, yes. I agree with you in this moment, I agree with you. I trust you in this because I know your love for me, I know your love for me, and I trust that more than I trust my own faulty understanding, because your thoughts are higher than my thoughts, your ways are higher than my ways, so much so that higher than the heavens are above the Earth. Your thoughts are higher than my thoughts, your ways are higher than my ways. I’m not God, and it’s ridiculous for me to try to figure that out. Give this one a grace to trust your love that you are all up in this situation.

You are all up in it. You get all of it. And yes, you could speak a word and it would end. But listen, you allow this because your love is bigger than we could ever imagine, and your goodness is bigger than we could ever imagine. And this is love, whether you believe it or whether you understand it or not. This is what love is to allow. What’s happening right now? I don’t know why either, but God, you are bigger and you are faithful, no matter how ugly, gross, bad, sad, difficult, treacherous, this looks like you.

Lord, I ask for this one listening to have a deeper, deeper, deeper revelation of your love than ever before. And I want that to God, I ask for that help us to love You, because You love us first. So Lord, in my tiny little way, I just say I love you, and I want that to be truer and deeper and wider for me too. And amen. Well, this was special. Thank you for joining me in it. I look forward to talking to you next week. I would love for you to spend a little time reflecting, and I’m going to give you some space and time on this reflecting. Should sharing with God what this makes you think of and I’ll place the music after You have that opportunity. I Love You. Thank You. You.

I hope that was a beautiful reflection time, and I just remembered my high school biology teacher, Miss Dell. Shout out to you. Miss Dell, God bless. Talk next week.