When love hurts, love more. I promise you, loving someone will sometimes break your heart. Love them anyway. True love can bring pain to you, but the goodness from the pain can have a great influence on others. Christ's love for the Father and for mankind brought Him the pain of the cross, but glory in the resurrection. Eternal good was made possible through His pain. Love will always remain when all other works fail. Love is a fruit from the Spirit. When observing love, even your physical body will respond. Seeing great acts of love can put a lump in the throat and tears in the eyes of the strongest warrior. Receive the love of others and the love of God with great gratitude. With great courage, wisdom, and patience fill your heart with love for God and others. The Greatest gift that we can use in this life, to help the ones we love and our fellow man, is Love.
(1 Corinthians 13) Take the chance on love, even though you may get hurt, it is worth it a hundredfold.
Xander, Anna Jewell, Connor and Grady always remember God is love, so study everything you can in the bible about love and you will have a life you've never dreamed of.
Love comes from God, because God is love. (1John 4:) We are created in the Image of God, so we have the capability to love as God loves. (Genesis 1:27) Love did not evolve by evolutionary processes. Many say, life evolved from nothing over billions of years, so love disproves evolution.
How does love cause pain? In the summer of 1974, I met my wife, Debbie, on a blind date. To my surprise this blind date was 180 degrees from my first blind date. She was beautiful and still is. The seed of love was planted in my heart. The more I was with her, the more the seed sprouted and grew, and is still growing. She is a great wife, mother and grandmother. Her greatest virtue then and now was that she loves God. The love she has for God has influenced me throughout the years. She was so healthy, active, beautiful and could do anything.
But, here comes the pain. Many I know have experienced this pain. It is heart breaking and sometimes hard to handle to see Deb suffer from Parkinson's disease. Out of such a strong love I have for Debbie, a passionate hate has begun to grow toward the Parkinson's disease she has. More importantly, I hate the deception and sin that Satan brought into our world. A world that was created as a paradise for man, by a loving God, and now is full of sin, pain and suffering. This is not God's fault. I love God more each day, as I realize what He has done for us and our pain and suffering.
The day Eve disobeyed God, by being deceived by the serpent's lie, is when sin entered into the world God had created as a paradise for mankind. God then put man out of the garden, because He didn't want him to live forever in a sin filled and fallen world. The disease Debbie is dealing with now is one of the results of our fallen world. Satan is the one responsible for the temptation, pain and suffering of this present world. (Read the book of Job) He wants us to blame God and to lose our trust and faith in Him.
My wonderful wife suffers, because mankind chose to disobey God. Your loved ones do too.
As a matter of fact, God doesn't like our suffering. He has prepared a place of eternal torment for the Devil and his angels. That is the only place in the universe where love is not present, because God is not there. Many have chosen to love the world instead of the Heavenly Father. The love of the Father is not in them. They are destined to perish in this place, unless they repent and love the Father more than the world. (1John 2:15-17) But God loves us so much, that He gave us His only begotten Son, that we should not perish. (John 3:16-18) He is longsuffering toward us, hoping we will repent and follow His Son. (2 Peter 3:9)
God has shown us how much He loves us by letting His Son die that cruel death on the cross, in our stead, to pay the price for our sins. How can we not love and want to obey Him? He has a place prepared for us, if we love and obey Him. But more importantly to me, He has prepared a place for those dearest to me on this earth. My wife Debbie, my children, my grandchildren, my family, and the friends I have made along the way have the opportunity to be with Him for all eternity. I do not want anyone that I love to be deceived by the Devil, as Eve was, and to lose this great and precious inheritance.
We are only living on earth from our date of birth until our date of death. The life in between those dates can be one of joy or heartache, pain, suffering, and many times very unfair. If we are treated unfairly, God says vengeance is His. He will repay those who have been unfair and hurtful to us. (Romans 12:19) He also loves us so much and hates to see our pain, that He has promised us a place to make up for all the pain. This place is for eternity. (John 14:1-3; 1 Cor. 2:9)
One day Deb will be cured from Parkinson's disease, either in this life or the next. We are looking forward to it. I am going to love my heavenly Father with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind, and do my best to let His love manifest through me towards those who need love. I am going to do all I possibly can do, to not love the world as John mentions in 1 John 2:15-17. The devil has incited many people in our country to live as the world and not do the will of God. I want to be Satan's enemy not his friend. I want the evidence of my love to remain as an example when I have gone to the next life
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Remember the love you share from God is powerful and has heavenly rewards. You can't share love from the world, because it has none to share. Are you going to be God's son or daughter to share His love or are you going to be a friend of the world? Like with Eve, He still gives you a choice . I hope you make the right choice. Remember, He loves you and so do I.
Please send me your comments. At times as we are having in our country today, there seems to be more hate expressed than love. We need to love and encourage each other, even if we take the chance of getting hurt. Please contact me at rhepler52@yahoo.com or rhepler52@gmail.com . You can purchase my book, The Heart Behind the Stone: Develop a Giant Slaying Heart on www.amazon.com.
Thanks for reading!
Rick
Happy Valentine's Day Debbie! Remember how much I love you? 2
