Your Valentine from the God who loves you dearly
Too often our concept of God is that He is an angry, unloving despot leaning over the battlements of Heaven, watching us with an eagle eye, hoping to catch us doing something wrong so He can zap us in glee with a 2 X 4 board.
But that is a lie of Satan. God so yearns for us to trust Him! Listen to what your Heavenly Father Himself tells you on this Valentine’s Day.
You are probably familiar with John 3:16,17. But it may be so familiar that you may not be able to hear how God expresses, over and over, His passionate love for you:
For God so loved the world—
We may know Jesus loves us because He died for our sins. But this phrase tells us that God the Father so loved the world that He gave His Son. Your redemption from sin was on God’s heart as it was on the heart of Jesus. How long will His love last? Jeremiah 31:3 says “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”
That He gave His only-begotten Son—
Think how you’d feel if your child died so some guilty person would escape death! God suffered as much as Jesus did as He died on the cross. But God was willing to suffer that loss, because He loves you that much.
That whoever believes in Him should not perish—
What is necessary to receive this precious gift of eternal life? Only trust Him. Only ask Him to forgive your sins. “Whoever” means exactly that: absolutely anybody in the whole wide world, no matter who, and no matter how badly they have sinned
But have everlasting life—
How long will God’s love endure? Forever. When you trust Christ as your Savior, you aren’t making promises to be good so you can earn His love. You are accepting His gift of love and life, and He will then give you the grace to live right.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world—
but that the world through Him might be saved
This is God’s valentine for you. Please believe it and take it to heart. Live in the confidence that you are loved by God and nothing will ever change it. Then you can share it with confidence with others who long to know of His compassionate, eternal love too.