#uncondiotionallove

[layologie]

dropѕ тнe мιc. || #layologie #uncondiotionallove #hardwork #beingintentional #lustwontlast #seekreallove #knowthedifference🎤

[celiawickedrunnah]

These two are my Loves ❤️💖💫✨ Their unconditional love fills my soul with so much love and happiness every second! I love you, Kurt Westbrook! @jkurtwestbrook ⭐️ Also, happy birthday 🎂 to the most loving, smart and fun puppy I've ever known!! He's turning 8 today and I remember the day we first met him and brought him house as if it was yesterday. We love ❤️🐶 you so much R2-D2!!! Thank you for choosing us to be your fur parents 🐶🐾💑 . . . #happyvalentinesday #lovewins❤️ #uncondiotionallove . . #puppylove🐶 #puppybirthday #furparents #ourfurbaby🐶

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

God’s Furious Longing for You

Note on the text: I used David C Cook’s 2009 publication of Brennan Manning’s The Furious Longing of God

“I am my Beloved’s and His desire is for me”(Song of Songs 7: 10). It can be said that this book is a meditation on that passage; on the intense and insatiable love that God has for you. 

God loves you passionately, no matter who you are or what you have done for “his love is never never never based on our performance , never conditioned by our moods- of elation or depression. The furious love of God know no shadow of alteration or change. It is always reliable” (35). There is no scenario in which God’s love towards you changes; the Devil is the only one who will try to convince you otherwise. He is the one who whispers to you “Now you’ve really done it, why would God ever continue to love one such as you”, or “don’t turn to God now, you’re just an unrepentant sinner. How can you, imperfect as you are, dare to turn towards the most perfect Lord?” Our God is the one who forgave the thief at the very last second, who promised him Heaven after a lifetime of sin. He is the Good Shepherd who actively seeks out the Lost Sheep, even when the Sheep does not know that he is lost or how to get home again. The kingdom of God is not for those who know they are saved, but for those who “know they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle” (32). 

God loves you and wants a deeply intimate relationship with you. The question is how can you best return that love to Him? How can you best commit ourselves to that loving relationship with the Divine Lover? You can only do this imperfectly at best. You are going to make mistakes, you are going to break in your commitment to the relationship at various times. You will try to give what you can, with the knowledge that you will indeed full short. You may even fall short of your expectations and desires: you may want to love Him more than you seem to be  capable of doing. But you do what you can; you say sorry when you fail to fulfill your role in this loving relationship and try again knowing that God is happy with the idea that you are trying to love Him in the best way that you can: “It serves well to fasten [onto the idea of] the utter delight of a loving God who is deeply touched that, in the utter brouhaha of your busy life, you would devote even five minutes to spiritual reading” (39). As Thomas Merton once prayed: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. . . . Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you”.

There is a story that Brennan Manning, who was a Franciscan priest for a time, tells of an illiterate leper named Yolanda who was dying. He gave her the Sacrament of the Sick and after he put away the sacred oil, he turned around to see her with the most radiant smile that he had ever seen. He then asked her: 

Will you tell me why you’re so happy?’ She said, ‘Yes, the Abba of Jesus just told me [that] he would take me home today!’ I vividly remember that hot tears were streaming down my cheeks. After a lengthy pause I asked her just what the Abba of Jesus [had] said. Yolanda [responded]: ‘Come now my love. My lovely one, come. For you the winter has passed, the snows are over and gone, the flowers, the season of joyful songs has come. The cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land. Come now my love. My Yolanda come. Let me see your face. And let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is beautiful. Come now my love. My lovely one come” (55-56). 

If this sounds familiar it is because what she heard was a paraphrased version of the Song of Songs chapter 2 verses 10-14. That is how much God loves you; that is how much he loves all of us.