Let's Light the Candle of Love - Advent Two
For this second week of Advent we are studying LOVE. What's the first verse that pops into your head?
“He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. ”
“Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. ”
John 3:16
All great verses on love but these are verses talking about how we should love. John 3:16 reminds us that God loves us so much that He gave us His only Son. Jesus came into this world as a human baby boy. He taught about love and then gave the ultimate love sacrifice - His life!
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
In Max Lucado’s book “3:16” he wrote this: A twenty-six-word parade of hope: beginning with God, ending with life, and urging us to do the same. Brief enough to write on a napkin or memorize in a moment, yet solid enough to weather two thousand years of storms and questions. If you know nothing of the Bible, start here. If you know everything about the Bible, return here. We all need the reminder. The heart of the human problem is the heart of the human. And God’s treatment is prescribed in John 3:16. He loves. He gave. We believe. We live.
As I was was writing this post, a song just kept running through my head “We Are The Reason” originally recorded by David Meece. It’s an older “contemporary” Christian song that you don’t hear very much but it’s one of my favorites. I love the words of this song:
“As little children, we would dream of Christmas morn
And all the gifts and toys, we knew we’d find
But we never realized, a Baby born one blessed night
Gave us the greatest gift of our lives
We were the reason that He gave His life
We were the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost, He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
As the years went by, we learned more about gifts
And giving of ourselves, and what that means
On a dark and cloudy day, a Man hung crying in the rain
Because of love, because of love
And we were the reason that He gave His life
We were the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost, He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
I fin’lly found the reason for living
It’s in giving every part of my heart to Him
In all that I do, every word that I say
I’ll be giving my all just for Him, for him
And we are the reason that He gave His life
We are the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost, He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
He is our reason to live”
God showed us the real meaning of love when He gave us His one and only Son, Jesus Christ. Why else would God send His only Son into this corrupt world? He did so that those who believe in Him will be forgiven and have eternal life with Him in heaven. Praise God from whom all blessing flow!
I designed this graphic when God woke me up around 3:00am in the morning. The image just kept going through my head but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I struggled with other designs but nothing seemed to work. Thank goodness I listened to God! You can find the graphic for this page in the FREEBIE section above.
After I traced the design onto the page of my interleave Bible, I filled the image with watercolor. I wished that I’d make the background a different color but I was thinking about the nighttime sky so I guess it worked out! I cut out the cross from old hymnal paper and painted it brown. After gluing the cross onto the page, I traced everything with a Faber Castel black pitt pen and a Uniball white signo gel pen.
I added the words from the Max Lucado’s reference above… “He loves. He gave. We believe. We live”.
Do you ever wonder if God really loves you as much as the Bible says He does? Maybe you feel like you are not worthy of God’s love because of past things that you’ve done in your life. I pray that during this Advent season, you will feel God's love and realize that are indeed...worthy of God's love. Remember that you are part of “whoever” from John 3:16….all you have to do is believe.