A Love Letter from God

To: YOU
From: God

Date: Today

Re: What I Think About You

I want to tell you that I have known you since before the foundations of time. I even know the hairs on your head. I put you together on purpose for a purpose. I looked at you and saw that you were fearfully and wonderfully made. I even created you in my image.

I know the plans that I have for you. Plans to prosper and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.

I also gave you gifts to prepare and equip you for the plans I have for you. These gifts I’ve given are irrevocable. Don’t neglect them. Exercise them and stir them up!

I want you to be confident about this: When I begin a good work in you I will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Although you may encounter tribulations in this world, I want you to know that in me you have peace. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.

I am not slack concerning my promises. Forever my Word is settled in heaven and my faithfulness to all generations. When I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; When I have purposed it, I will also do it.

You can look to me as a refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Cast your burdens upon me and I will sustain you. I shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Come unto me when you labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For I am your rock, your fortress, your deliverer, your strength in whom you can trust. Though you fall you shall not be utterly cast down, for I will uphold you with my hand.

Don’t listen to the ungodly, don’t stand with sinners, and don’t sit with the scornful. But rather delight yourself all day long in my Word. If you do, you will be like a tree planted by the river. You will bring forth fruit in season and whatever you do will prosper.

Finally, I want you to know I love you. I love you so much I gave my only begotten Son. When you believe in Him, you will not die but have healing, freedom, victory, forgiveness, and eternal life!

- John Mason, from the book You’re Born An Original Don’t Die A Copy

LOVE

Valentines Day is one of those days that some celebrate while others dread.  Personally I believe that love is a verb that you live out daily, but it’s nice to have a day that serves as a reminder.

On days like today I enjoy reading love stories that serve as an inspiration or hope.  This year there’s a couple who entered into the covenant of marriage 73 years ago, and at ages 91 and 100 are still fulfilling the beautiful covenant.  The husband is quoted as saying, “I went to Denver in 1936 to get rich, but I found a jewel there instead.  If you would give me one of your millions, I wouldn’t trade her for it. I lucked out.”  

As I read this story this morning I asked God that there would be more Dale and Doris stories in the years to come.  In a society where it’s perfectly acceptable to marry based on self-interest and self-gain, and walk away when that doesn’t work out, I prayed that He would help us find our jewels. Not only find it but cherish it as the most prized possession.  I have a long way before I can speak as Dale and Doris do today, but I plan to enjoy the next decades with the jewel that God has given me, my husband Freddy.

As I had my prayer time this morning I thanked God because He sees us as His precious jewels, He showers us with His love, and days like today serve as a reminder that whether or not we are someone’s jewel here on earth, we are loved by our Creator and He wants to love us more than we can ever imagine.

So to all of my readers, celebrate LOVE today!  If you had chosen to grieve or sulk today, you are LOVED, you are a jewel, celebrate it and commit to being faithful to HIM who loves you forever.

“I’ve never quit loving you and never will.  Expect love, love, and more love!”
Jeremiah 31:3 (MSG)

Love Is…

Growing up I loved ‘LOVE IS’ cartoons, and often dreamed of being in love and living a fulfilled, happy, married life.  I had several bum relationships and met a lot of interesting people along the way, but on March 18, 1997 I met THE ONE!  Nine months later, fourteen years ago I married my best friend.

If I were to create my own LOVE IS cartoons, I would have to draw from the last fourteen years.  My TOP TEN list would be:

• Love is…fearlessly communicating
• Love is…comfortably being you
• Love is…dreaming together
• Love is…forgiving and forgetting, DAILY
• Love is…faithful friendship
• Love is…purposeful living, together
• Love is…found in the eyes of our children
• Love is…enduring, enduring, enduring
• Love is…being protected
• Love is…AMAZING

I love you Freddy Santiago and am thankful that you were at the wrong place at the right time.  I’m thankful I threw away my list of demands and was willing and open to believe that true LOVE does exist.  I’m thankful that you were confident enough to see past my wall of insecurity that came off as arrogance and swept me off my feet.  I love you for making me laugh, cry, dream, dare and most of all LOVE.

Happy Anniversary my love, looking forward to our quinceañera next year! (:

“Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].”
1 Corinthians 13:7 (AMP)

TRUE Love

If I sent out an e-blast asking people to define true love, the responses would be influenced by each person’s experience and I wouldn’t get the same answer across the board.

During childhood we have this fairy tale concept of what true love is that works its way into our adolescent years.  As we mature and recover from our first heartbreak (or heartbreaks), our concept of true love either matures or dies out, depending on how we deal with the let-downs of life.

I believe the best example of TRUE love is given by our Heavenly Father.  It’s amazing to me that I serve a God who does not only love us, but His very nature is love, He IS love!  Imagine that!  We have the opportunity to learn how to love from the author of love, there is no better way to discover what TRUE love is.

So what is TRUE love?  Is it never feeling disappointed?  Never being let down?  Never getting angry?  Easily loving at all times?  I don’t think so!

Even the Author of love, the One who possesses UNFAILING love is merciful and compassionate, meaning that He has to extend mercy because He chooses not to react based on unfavorable circumstances.  He demonstrates compassion, meaning that at times He must love those who don’t deserve it.  He is slow to anger, meaning that TRUE love knows how to control emotions and not react explosively and impulsively.  Filled with UNFAILING love, TRUE love never fails the one it loves.

God never fails us, even when we are unfaithful, even when we fall short, even when we cause hurt, He loves us unfailingly.  I think there isn’t a better example of TRUE love, and it’s a challenge for us all to learn to LOVE as our God does, in a TRUE and UNFAILING way.

“The Lord is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.”
Psalm 145:8 (NLT)

Blurry

I’m ten days away from my birthday and yesterday I realized that one of my ‘early’ birthday gifts is the realization that my eyesight is not as sharp as it was.  I’m seeing kinda blurry.  It’s not fun!  I had to zoom into some documents I was working on yesterday and I wanted to cry.

I thought about it a bit and realized I’ve had a few headaches when working too long.  I must admit, my vision is blurred, and in about an hour I will be going in to have an optomologist tell me what’s going on (or what’s wrong).  I cannot live with blurred vision, it impairs my productivity and if there’s a way to fix things, then shame on me if I don’t take care of the problem.

I meditated on this blurred vision problem this morning and thought about how many times we allow our life’s vision to be blurred.  We don’t see clearly and we zoom in and then things appear bigger than they are, or we don’t have the ability to see what’s ahead of us, and we live life with blurred, impaired vision and do nothing about it.

I remembered how the Apostle Paul reminded us that we will have those ‘blurry’ moments in life, and there will be things we won’t understand while on earth, but in the meantime to deal with the blurriness, we must do several things, but the most important is to LOVE EXTRAVAGANTLY.

So for now, I’m probably going to have to purchase corrective lenses to help me with my blurry vision, and when it comes to the ‘blurry’ situations in life, I will continue to love, knowing that in loving my ’life’ vision will ultimately be corrected.

“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (MSG)

Chocolate Therapy

Chocolate Therapy as defined by the urban dictionary is when you solve your problems by eating mass amounts of chocolate.  My interpretation is that chocolate therapy is supposed to leave you feeling new and your troubles are long forgotten.

I want to be honest and let you know that I truly enjoy chocolate, I love having hot chocolate with loved ones, and I will always opt for chocolate cake over any other flavor.   Yet I’ve found that although I really enjoy chocolate, it doesn’t meet all of my needs.

Many describe chocolate as being rich, extravagant, surprising, and indulging, yet for me those words describe someone who truly helps me forget all of my troubles and problems, my God!  He fills us with His rich love, extravagant mercy, surprising forgiveness and He indulges us with a love and grace that are-never ending.

Chocolate Therapy doesn’t have long-term effects.  The piece of chocolate doesn’t last forever and if you eat too much chocolate you’re just paving the way for more problems (weight, acne, dissatisfaction).  When you really think about it, with the way things are in this economy, Chocolate Therapy is also quite expensive.

Yet God’s love is better than ‘chocolate therapy’.  His love never ends, His mercy endures forever, His forgiveness can’t be second guessed!  I don’t know about you, but who needs Chocolate Therapy when God’s love and grace are more satisfying than a piece of chocolate, and the only thing that it will cost is us is an open, willing and available heart.  I don’t know about you, but for me, God’s love is better than chocolate! (:

“Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O Lord.
How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
in the shadow of your wings.”
Psalm 36:5-7 (NLT)

The Love of My Life

As a little girl I dreamt of growing up, falling in love, having a big wedding, moving to Florida and living in a beautiful house with white picket fences with two children, a boy and a girl.

Little did I know that God had something better in store for me.  When I was one year, 10 months and 3 days old, a little boy was born not far from where I lived, and little did we know that our paths would cross 20 some odd years later and we would be married.

Interestingly enough our paths had crossed many times throughout our adolescent years, but we were not aware of one another.  We each had our own world, our own drama, our own issues, but thankfully we didn’t allow our hearts to become jaded.  Had we allowed hurt and disappointment to take over, we probably would not have been where we are now, and we would have missed US!

I guess the one thing that we loved about each other from the moment we met was our ability to laugh.  Laugh at the past, laugh at ourselves, laugh at pain, laugh at adversity laugh at our mistakes, basically laugh at life.  We both laughed from the moment we met, and we still have the ability to laugh today through the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Today my husband celebrates thirty-something years of life.  I have lived with this man for almost fourteen years, and I have been a witness to the amazing heart he has.  So much so that we had to postpone our wedding because he was donating his kidney to his sister, one month before our wedding.  His heart is bigger than most, his compassion surpasses logic at times, his patience is demonstrated daily with our four children, his sensitivity is poured out when push comes to shove, his passion towards life and God’s calling have changed my life in such a way that I have learned to be a risk-taker, such as he is.

I honor my husband today, Pastor Freddy Santiago, and am so proud and thankful that God allowed our paths to cross, and we were able to discern what being at the right place at the right time was all about.

To the love of my life today I wish a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!  The best years lie ahead of us!!!

“Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Who Will Love Me For Me?

Lately it seems that so many people are opting to rely on substances to damper feelings they struggle with.  As you speak to them, hear their stories, or find out about tragedies that have happened you realize that the feeling of dissatisfaction with themselves leads them to rely on external things to try to fix an internal problem.

I’m reminded of a song my daughter Hannah loves “WHAT LOVE REALLY MEANS” by JJ Heller.  So many scenarios are presented of people struggling for acceptance.  It leads me to ask God to give me His heart and His eyes, so that I would not minimize their pain, nor judge their situation, but instead be able to present in a tangible way the only answer that can fill the void in their lives, CHRIST’S LOVE!

Maybe you are the one struggling thinking you aren’t good enough to be loved, accepted, and/or acknowledged.  The truth is that in life, there are people whose expectations we will never meet.  If I focused my energy in meeting everyone’s expectations I don’t know where I’d be right now.  So what do we do?  If you are struggling with these feelings, you need to understand that HE LOVES YOU, not for what you have done or what you will become, HE LOVES YOU JUST BECAUSE HE DOES, and I know that’s enough for me. 

If you know someone who’s struggling with the aforementioned feelings my challenge to you is to ask God to give you His heart.  There’s something wrong when someone is suffering with addictions.  I guarantee you no one wakes up one morning saying, “I choose to rely on alcohol, or drugs, or food, or cutting, or an eating disorder.”  This is a battle that begins in the mind many times because of unexpressed feelings or experiences that have been suppressed.  My prayer is that God would give us His heart to heal, mend and restore.  What message do I want to communicate to those in need?  He loves you for you, and He has the most amazing plan, give Him a chance!

Take some time to allow your heart to beat like God’s, I DARE YOU!!!

“But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.”
Romans 5:8

Love Letters

My two oldest children kicked off this week by attending VBS at their school with the theme ’NEW CITY’.  At this NEW CITY there is an incredible postal system that creates such an excitement in the participants, and they are constantly writing letters to one another.  There’s the sorting and distribution center, and the recipients receive new mail daily.  The purpose behind this is for the children to learn how to communicate effectively with God through prayer, even if it is through a letter.

Yesterday evening I was in my office and my computer was not working for a bit, so I decided to go through the heaps of paperwork I had in my office, in search of some stationary.  Once the stationary was found, I sat down with a pen and began to write love letters to my children.  In my files I have the first letter written to each of them when they were born, my personal love letters to my children, and I’m still debating if I give it to them when they’re 10, 16 or 18.  That decision will be determined at some point, but instead of pulling out one of those letters, I began to write.  It felt weird not to type out a letter, but rather write it and as the words flowed my tears flowed.  I’m so proud of my children.  I know you might be thinking that’s how all parents feel because they can’t see reality right in front of them, but the thing is that although my kids have plenty of flaws, I can see God in them.

I wrote what I see and envision in them, the potential that is there being developed year by year;  the qualities that have been learned from my husband and I, but also the abilities, talents and gifts that God placed in them.  I wrote a love letter to two of my children yesterday, and the message was similar but yet very different.   Matthew and Hannah are two completely different individuals, but I love them equally.  I wrote a message of love, encouragement, hope and dreams to each of them but it was not verbatim. 

I walked into the church with them this morning and I went directly to one of the teachers and asked her where I could ‘mail’ my letter.  There was a cute little mailbox sitting in the corner of the church basement, and I placed my two letters in the mail slot.  I wish I could see Hannah and Matthew’s face when they open the letter and read it.  I hope they can feel the love conveyed in the sentences written by my hand on that old stationary that was in my office.  I hope the words are held near their heart and that they believe in themselves as much as I believe in them.

As I drove to work this morning I thanked God for His love letter to me.  Same message to each of His children, but meant for us to apply it in our lives.  I wondered if God sees my face when I read a verse that makes me feel loved, or gives me hope, or lets me know that my tomorrow will be better than today.  God is my Father, and although I’m not a “Dad”, I’m a Mom and I know that my husband and I love are children equally.  If I had the power to be omnipresent, I’d be at the basement of St. James right now peaking through a corner, watching Hannah and Matthew’s reaction as they read the letter I sent them, hoping that they feel what I felt as I wrote it.  I can’t do it, so for now I will be sure that if my Heavenly Father is peaking out of the corners of Heaven, He knows I’m treasuring His love letter like no other.

Take some time to read your love letter daily.  God delights in us, He loves us, He wants the best for us, and He’s written a love book for us filled with promises, hopes and instructions, all we have to do is take the time to be amazed with how much it was meant for us.

“I’ve never quit loving you and never will.
Expect love, love, and more love!”
Jeremiah 31:3

You MUST Love Me!!!

Being single was one of the most challenging times of my life.  You don’t know who you will be with; you go through emotional ups and downs; you fall in love, and then find out it’s not love; then you do fall in love and find out it’s not mutual; being single many times is equal to emotional turmoil.  The most uncomfortable feeling for me at one point of my ‘singleness’ was being told by someone I was getting to know that I WOULD LOVE HIM!  I was like, WHAT??? You don’t tell me what I feel, if I do I do, but that will come naturally.  Yet the funny thing is that years later, my now husband looked me in the eye while taking a walk in downtown and told me, “I KNOW YOU WILL MARRY ME!”  I looked at him and said, “I WILL NOT!” Yet in my heart I knew I’d eventually end up marrying him, I wasn’t as appalled as I’d been the previous time. 

Imagine being told, YOU MUST LOVE ME, no options, no questions, just a command such as that!  In our human experience it’s just something you don’t do.  I don’t like being coerced into doing things, it’s never the preferred option, yet isn’t it amazing that we have been given that command by God?   Jesus is having a conversation with a man in Luke 10 and the man asks what he should do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus replies in verse 26, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”  The man responds in verse 27, ““You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  

Now life would be much easier if Jesus would have responded, “You know, Moses was too harsh and he didn’t interpret what my Father in heaven meant, you don’t have to love God, but it would be good if you did because it’s the right thing to do.  The truth is that the neighbor thing was too narrow-minded because now that I’ve walked on earth I have seen how evil people can be, so you don’t necessarily need to love your neighbor, only the good ones.”  Some of us would have jumped for joy with a response like this, but instead Jesus responds in verse 28, “Do this and you will live!”

There are no options then, YOU MUST LOVE ME!  I will love HIM!  Jesus responded if I do, I will live.  The man was asking about inheriting eternal life, and Jesus affirmed that we MUST love GOD.  No ifs, ands or buts, it’s a MUST!  In life, it’s tough to love someone who says you MUST love me, but when it comes to God, I can’t not love Him, when I think about the rewards that come with loving Him.  If you’ve questioned or doubted why, don’t ask questions, just LOVE Him, because you MUST!

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