How Do You Know When Two People Are In Love?

How do you know when two people are in love? Is it because they text each other? Or perhaps it's because they talk to other people about each other? Maybe it's because they send each other gifts or gaze longingly at each other from across the room. There are some romanticized notions of love but when we get right down to it, it is when two people surrender themselves to each other. It is an extravagant and lavish affair as two hearts become one.

Love is not to be trifled with. It cannot be one sided. It is not a game. It is not a contest. It should not be lightly entered into. It is a total giving of oneself to that one special person and receiving from them everything they have to offer. There is nothing reserved or stingy about love. It lavishly pours, gives, sacrifices, and surrenders.

You are blessed today because you are loved in just this manner.

You see, one thing that love does readily is forgive. If you can't forgive that one special person then you don't really love them. If you can't look deep into their eyes and lavishly pour out your heart of forgiveness to cover their offence, then you don't know love. If you keep record of their wrongs and hold it against them in your next disagreement, as if it is a weapon to use against them, you are trifling with love and have no idea how to be extravagant.

Yet, you are loved, not with a stingy love but with a richness that is hard to fathom.

You are blessed.

Look up!

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7-8)

The Father and the Son love you with great extravagance. The Father sacrificed the one he loved just for you. Jesus poured out his all just for you. They did the one thing that real love does, they forgave.

You deserved to die. You deserved to be nailed to the cross. The way you have treated God. The words you have spoken. The actions you have taken. The thoughts you have thought and the emotions you have held on to. Just the way you were born, with a natural nature to rebel against God. All these are offences and in rebellion to our Holy God. But his love for you is so great that he paid the insurmountable cost of redemption just so he could say to the object of his affection, "I forgive you".

You don't deserve it. It's called grace. It's the good thing that is given to you even though you don't merit it. It is provoked by love. Not the love of any man because a man's heart is fickle, but the love of God which never changes.

This forgiveness that we kick around as if it is a kid's soccer ball, has come by great sacrifice and is only offered through the blood of the perfect Son of God. He has done this in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Riches. Do you hear the extravagance of this love? And he lavished it on us with all wisdom and understanding. In other words, God did not do this by mistake. There was purpose in it. He did not make a mistake when he chose to love you. It was the decision he made. And he asks us to make the same decision for him.

It is a love story. A rich, extravagant, lavish love story between a Father and his children, a lover and his bride. You are that bride! He loves you. He forgives you.

Look up!

Be encouraged today; you are blessed by his forgiveness.