ICRAVE Longing for God’s Love

You and I are looking for love, sometimes desperately.

  • Sometimes human relationships add incredible richness to our lives.  Sometimes they just bring sorrow.  But none of these relationships can fulfill the deepest longing for love in our hearts. 
  • In our journey to find God, we need to pay attention to whether our desire for love is distracting us or is leading us to Him.

It has been said that “every man who knocks on the door of a brother is really looking for God.” 

  • If you are knocking on the door of some self-destructive behavior or relationship, you might actually have arrived at an important point in your journey back to God.  Why?  Because the disappointment you inevitably feel in cheap substitutes will make you wonder where you can find real love.
  • Our longing for real love goes all the way back to how the human race was made in the first place.  God intended that we experience his love both directly from him and through others we relate to in a healthy way.

“It is not good for man to be alone”

Gen 2:18
  • God was not just saying that the first man needed a wife.  His statement went deeper than that.  He was saying that our longing for love and intimacy is part of our inheritance from him. 
  • He knew from the beginning that it will feel not good if we are all alone.  We long for loving relationships with others, and if we don’t get them, our lives feel empty.

Longing for love from other people is a good thing, even if relationships can sometimes go terrible wrong.  But our need for human connection often obscures a deeper longing. 

  • Not only do we have a longing to love and be loved by other people, we also long to love and be loved by God.

Re-source: Receive

be given or presented with(something)

“God is love”

1 John 4:16

What we long for, God doesn’t just have but actually God is.  He is love.  Furthermore, he pursues us with his love. 

  • God’s pursuit of us has a name, and the person with that name didn’t just walk around talking about love – he lived it so that we can have it. 
  • God reaches out to us in Jesus.

You’re not going to stop trying to find love.  Deep in your heart you know it’s your inheritance – and you’re going to keep pursuing it.

  • If you’re feeling discouragement in your love relationships today, consider these encouraging words from the apostle Paul: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
  • God is saying that when your heart feels empty and out of love, if you’ll let Him, He will pour his love into your heart. 
  • The result is that not only do you feel his love deep inside your heart, you also have a source of love that gives you what you need to love others the way he loves you.

Will you open yourself up to letting God fill your longing to love and be loved?

craving and resource from “Finding Your Way Back To God” by Dave and Jon Ferguson

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