Our Father’s Love (Part 11) Endless Love, Unbroken and Unrelenting

Our Father’s Love (Part 11) Endless Love, Unbroken and Unrelenting

Psalm 103:17-18 “But Lord, your endless love stretches from one eternity to the other, unbroken and unrelenting toward those who fear you and those who bow facedown in awe before you. Your faithfulness to keep every gracious promise you’ve made passes from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.”

Today’s verse is uplifting, especially after yesterday’s verse which had us thinking about how short life is. Today we get to go back to thinking about how much God loves us. We could think about this all day, every day, and would still never really comprehend how vast His love for us is.  The other day we talked about how God separates us from our sin as far as the sunset is from the sunrise. Today we are talking about how much He loves us. The verse says that His “endless love stretches from one eternity to the other, unbroken and unrelenting.”

This world doesn’t seem to understand endless love. Love seems to end every day. The divorce rate in this country is so high. Actually, it is high all over the world. We live in a throw-away society where we want the newest and the best things, and we get rid of the old things. We don’t seem to want to work to keep the things we have. When things get difficult, when they get broken, we throw them away and start again instead of trying to fix them. This is not the same with God. His love is endless.

Can you even imagine what that would look like? Endless love, love that doesn’t end. Does that mean He still loves us after we mess up and hurt Him? Yes! Does that mean He still loves us even after we keep doing the same stupid things over and over again? Yes! Surely He will stop loving us once He can see that we are unfixable and unredeemable? Nope! There will never be a time when God’s love will stop. He loves us when we can’t even love ourselves. He loves us even when we don’t deserve it. He loves us even when we don’t want Him too! He created us with this endless love that goes from one eternity to the other. I love the adjectives this translation uses. They are unbroken and unrelenting.

I love unbroken because that is such a difference from our love. We live in a broken world, and so our love is broken. We struggle to love unconditionally. We struggle to love each other the way the Lord loves us. If I’m being honest, sometimes we struggle with just liking other people, never mind loving them. We love people when they do this or that. We love people who act like us, talk like us, look like us. Sometimes we love people because of what we can get from them, which is not actually loving them but using them. God’s love is not broken. He loves us unconditionally. He loves us for who we are, not what we do. We do not have to do anything to earn His love.

I love unrelenting because it is such an active word. When I hear the word unrelenting, I don’t think about a God who sits up in heaven just waiting for us to come to Him. When I hear that word, I picture a God who will stop at nothing to save His children. I picture a God who chases after them and does not let anything get in the way of finding them. God loves us, He wants us to be with Him forever in paradise. He is unrelenting in that pursuit. Why do we fight it so much?

The second part of this verse says, “Your faithfulness to keep every gracious promise you’ve made passes from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.” There are two really important things in that first sentence to highlight. The first is that it reminds us that God is faithful and He keeps His promises. It doesn’t just say that God keeps promises, but it says that He is faithful to keep EVERY gracious promise He made every promise! This means when you read a promise in the Bible, you can be assured that God will keep that promise.

The second important thing it says is that those promises are passed down from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. This shows us that the promises made in the Bible aren’t just for those people who were living at the time they were made. They are for you and for me too. It can be easy for us to read through the Bible and think of it as a great story about something that happened a really long time ago. We can think it has nothing to do with us, especially if we are reading a translation that is hard to understand. There may be a lot of words for things, and we don’t know what they mean.

The Bible is not just talking to those who lived back then. It is talking directly to each one of us, you and I. Before we sit down to read the Bible, we should ask the Lord to show us how what we are reading that day applies to our lives. I bet if we all did that before we read anything, we would be surprised at what we learned. The Lord wants to reveal the secrets in the Bible to us, we only need to ask Him. The Bible is not only relevant today but it could be called our handbook for how to get through life. It tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It tells us all about the Lord. The book of Proverbs teaches us right from wrong. The Gospels tell us all about Jesus and are also full of parables that teach us how we should live our lives. We get to read stories of what happens when we don’t live according to God’s ways.

The verse ends with, “You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.” This is a nice reminder to read the Bible and make sure we are following the Lord’s ways and keeping His Word. There are plenty of examples in the Bible to illustrate this point as well. You can look back throughout the Bible and see what happened to people who did not follow His ways. When we do not follow His ways, He allows us to feel the consequences of our actions, and sometimes that can be a pretty painful lesson. The good news is as soon as we turn back and repent, God is right there to welcome us back home with open arms.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for your endless love. We are thankful your love is unbroken and unrelenting. Thank you for pursuing us. Thank you for chasing us down until you find us. Thank you for all you do to save us. Lord, help us accept your love. Fill us with your love, and help us pass that love on to others. Lord, help us to follow your ways and keep your word. Help us to read the Bible, put in our hearts a deep desire to read the Bible. We want to know your promises, we want to know how you want us to live. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I apologize for my voice these past few mornings. I have been struggling with a cold. Usually, as soon as I start to feel better, my voice starts to sound worse. I think I am almost through with the cough, so hopefully, my voice will come back soon. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

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