DAILY BYTE
Of all the many human needs, perhaps the greatest is for love.
I remember talking to a psychologist once who told me that at the root of many people's problems is a lack of love. If when we were young and did not receive healthy, giving love from our parents or carers, then the chances are we will walk around the rest of our lives carrying the hurts and scars of those childhood experiences.
Perhaps this has been your experience and one you are still struggling with now?
Remember yesterday's focus reading, that after Jesus' heart was 'squeezed' with compassion for the crowds, he began to heal them (Matthew 14.14). We need to know that God's love can truly heal our wounds!
God's love can give us a deep sense of self-worth that is not tied up in arrogance or selfishness. God's love can give us a hope worth living for even when all else seems lost. God's love will never give up on us and never rest (even if it means we have to be challenged and disciplined) until we become whole again.
As I have been saying to you all week, this is why it is so vitally important to open up your heart, mind and soul to the love of God. If you don't you may forever be spiritually stunted, unable to grow past your wounds and hurts, and unable to grow past the life limitations others have set on you by their unloving actions.
As Jesus reached out in love and healed the crowd, so does God reach out to you. Know that nothing can separate you from the love of God and know that God's love is powerful enough to heal even the very greatest of hurts.
However, such healing does not happen by accident. If you are carrying deep wounds around with you, I would encourage you to seek help. Go to a trusted person who can shepherd you spiritually and point the way for you towards God's extravagant and healing love. Or what about writing down some of your hurtful experiences in the form of a prayer, asking God to heal and help you.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, we pray for healing. We lift up to you those areas of our lives that have been devastated by unloving and selfish actions. We bring to you those parts of our soul that have been affected by the neglect and abuse of others. We pray that your extravagent love would heal and help us. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Romans 8. 35-39 (MSG)
Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
'They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.'
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing-nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable-absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
