How great the Father's love for us

I was thinking the other day about how Gregg is always talking about the Bible being God's love story to us (yes Gregg, I actually listen ;) ). If there's one thing that I want to feel more and have a greater understanding of, is God's love for me. Being a single woman of God who has never been in a relationship and if anything, has really experienced little more than heartache in the area of relationships, sometimes I just need to be comforted that I am loved and that there is someone who wants to know me intimately. The other day, God gave me a glimpse of his love story. This hasn't happened in months, or at least, I've been blind to it. The last time was after reading one of my now favorite books, Redeeming Love. The story is a fictional book that takes the story of Hosea and his marriage to a prostitute, and puts it into a more modern setting ( well, modern being the wild west). Regardless of the setting though, the beauty of this book is the journey this prostitute takes from feeling unlovable and unable to love, to able to love not only her husband, but God. More importantly, her love for her husband is inferior to the love she has for her husband. The love that Hosea, her husband, shows her helped me to parallel his love for her with God's love for me. Shane & Shane has a song about this chapter in Hosea (Chapter 2). It is definitely one of my favorite Bible verses and its one of the first places I look when looking for love and comfort. It helps me to better understand the depth of God's love for me.
"Therefore, behold I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt" (Hosea 2:14-15)


But this post isn't about this verse. Its about the most recent love song that God sang to my heart. I was getting ready to go to work the other night and just felt beat down and tired. I have been working a lot lately with little sleep and things at work are crazzzy! I was already feeling so encouraged by God with the trip to Quito working out and already being a witness to my co-workers but God once again knew how to make my heart leap. I picked up the Psalms and just began to read them aloud. Somehow, hearing the words aloud brought me to tears. It was as if I had never heard them before but I had. Some of the verses had been highlighted or were lines in worship songs. How had it meant so much more this time? I think that reading it aloud makes me hear it more, it makes me believe it. I think its easy to read, at least for me, and just do that. Read. I don't think about it or try to feel it. So often I just think "wow, great point or that's something I need to remember"....but I don't. I put my Bible away and with it, I throw away and opportunity to learn and grow.

God's been so good to me these past two weeks and He's reminding me, when I desperately need to be, that He loves me. That He's enough. That humans will disappoint me because, like me, they aren't perfect. He has to be enough. He has to be superior. He wants to allure me.