Greater Love

February is the month we think of "love". I would like to write an eloquent article on love, but the truth is I just don't have the energy right now in between IV treatments and days down in bed. So I offer a "replay" or an article I shared last February, What's Eating You Up Inside?, and pray it will be a blessing or encouragement to you this month no matter what situation you find yourself in - happily enjoying the love of your life, longing for love you have yet to find, or grieving a lost love. But most of all, I pray it will remind you of the Lover of Your Soul who paid the ultimate Price, choosing to endure ultimate Heartbreak, because of His great Love!

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him."
John 3:16-18 (The Message)

:Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:13 (NIV)

"Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

"Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!"
Romans 5:7-9 (The Message)