The father's love

It was one pretty exciting day for me last Friday (21st Dec). Mum and I finally went out to catch a movie ( Enchanted) and I was really glad that we went out peacefully..we had a nice lunch, discussed about the movie and even a nice afternoon tea! I was quite surprised that she even volunteered to buy a nice green blouse for me! It's amazing what mum can do to surprise me when she's in a good mood. Anyway, praise God for it because I prayed for Him to watch over our outing and let his love go with us. Friends, it's really amazing what prayer and total dependence on God did for me. The Christmas Party that was organised for the team was successful also by the grace and assurance of God..actually, I was pretty worried that the party would not go well but then when I decided to pray and leave everything in God's hands, somehow things just flowed on smoothly! Praise and Thank God again!

The next amazing thing that God did today was to Siying. She said the sinner's prayer! Actually, I still don't really understand what she meant when she said she didn't mind accepting Christ. Perhaps she still had her fears and doubts which prevented her from giving a definite answer. But it's important for all of us to know that salavation is God's gift to us and the best gift that we can give to God is ourselves!

At Christmas service on the 25th, Pastor B showed us the present she received: a laughing Elmo. It was such a hilarious sight! It could roll forward and roll backward and kick it's legs up in the air while on it's back and laugh! Anyohow, the message by Pastor D was about Gifts. God's gift of Jesus to us- love wrapped in skin.

Sometimes, it pretty difficult to fully comprehend the extent of God's love. This is especially so when in today's world, the notion of romantic love seems to overshadow that of the true love shown by God- through the sacrifice of His son's life-such that it becomes easy to simply long for romantic love more than the Father's love. The craze over K/Taiwan dramas has certainly caught up with aunties and young girls ( like me) alike. Love tends to be portrayed rather erroneously in these shows if you were measuring it by God's standards. In such shows, people become lovers all too quickly and profess their love for each other all too flippantly. Apparently, you can make someone fully convinced that you love the person just by a peck on the lips. This is most ridiculously portrayed in the show It Started With A Kiss. Anyhow, I wouldn't deny that I got hooked by the show that I'm shamelessly criticising right now, it's just that it somehow got to my senses that such love is not love but lust. And in fact, lust is portrayed rather innocently in many and I would probably say, most shows. Kisses are given off like free gifts and couples have this funny way of managing to sleep under the same roof way too quickly. The so-called love becomes an instant gratification, it is self-seeking and even quite rude. By God's standards, this is totally unacceptable as in 1 Corinthians it says,

" Love is Patient,...it is not rude, it is not self-seeking,..".

Hence, the essence of true love is diluted and it takes much more effort to grasp the meaning of what true love is all about.

But of course, as we all know, God's love is true love. God's love is the greatest. By His standards, love means being willing to give up everything, including your own life. Love means to be persevering, to not give up on the one whom you are pursuing. God never gives up on us. No matter how far we may wander from Him, He always chases after our heart, longing for us to come back to Him so that He can love us and help us achieve the purposes that He has set for us. And no matter how far you think God is from you, He is always there. Sometimes, it's not Him, but we that have gone far away. All it takes is one deliberate step towards the Father to receive the love that was meant as a gift to us since the day that God made Adam and Eve.

Yes, God made us to love us. So let's love Him back by allowing Him to love us.