Desiring Love When It’s Right In Front of Me

I tend to have a terrible memory of where I last placed something. But surely I am not the only one who goes around the house searching for something, only to finally realize later that it had been “under my nose” the whole time while I was looking for it! When I find the item at long last that I was looking for, I always end up feeling ridiculous for not spotting it sooner and frustrated that I wasted time because of my “absent mindedness.”

Alas, this situation often relates to my possession of God’s love too often.

I have lost count of how many times I have sat around, yearning to be “loved.” Somehow, my mindset decided to make “superficial love” as the default love that I need. I am praying for God to change my default! How bizarre it is for me to feel like I am not “loved” simply because I do not feel “tangibly” loved right at the moment. And yet what does the Bible say countless times about God’s love for you and I?

God’s love is steadfast, never ceasing, sacrificial, inseparable from God’s children, demonstrative, everlasting, and definitely always present with us.

After studying God’s Word more about exactly what God’s love is, I wonder why I ever could think that it’s not enough (or not what I need at the moment). Yet I do. I go searching, or sit longing, for a tangible love that I somehow “need.” When, during that whole time, God’s love is there for me. It is right under my nose. In fact, God’s love not only is just sitting right in front of me. It is before and behind me, in and through me, guiding and protecting me.
How much time have I wasted, yearning for a love that could never compare to my Savior’s love for me?

And thus I am so grateful that God has begun to teach me how simple it is to find His love! All I have to do is search His Word, pray for satisfaction in Him, gaze at His beauty in creation, sing songs of praise, soak in the Psalms, etc. By doing this, God blesses me with more time to find His love rather than yearn for something else not nearly as great. Also, this gives me more time to share this awesome love!

So what are you doing?

Are you still looking around the house for that superficial love? Or are you going to stop, take a moment, and see that God’s (superbly better) love is and has always been right there under your nose?

I pray that as God’s love continues to encircle you and I, that He would grant us more grace to see and desire it more than anything else. And then, that we would share it with everyone we meet!

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases...” (Lam. 3:22)

“But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8)

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, not things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39)
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10)