Working The Word (Walking Away From Addiction Into The Sweet Arms of Jesus) God's Everlasting Love

By: Hanny Lynn Stearns

Fish N Loaves Ministries, Inc.

“Multiplying God’s Word Around The Globe”

 August 30, 2016

God’s Everlasting Love

Jeremiah 31:3

 The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. 

What the world needs now is love – sweet love. Does anyone remember that song? It dates me but that doesn’t concern me. What does concern me is the lack of love that Christians have received from the Father in heaven – the God of love. He has done everything in His power to prove His love for us. He gave us His Son to save us from hell. He gave us His Son to show us His love in tangible ways. He gave us His Son to show us how to love others as we receive His love.

Many today are struggling with addiction because deep inside their heart and soul, they need love. When people do not think they are loved, they will turn to something to try to ease the pain that those beliefs will certainly bring. I remember thinking I was not loved during the years I was raising my kids. Before that I was caught up in a survival mode and didn’t give the matter much thought.

When I lived in a loveless marriage, after having grown up in a loveless home, I began to really feel the pain of it all. I was never addicted to anything during my years of growing up. But in my thirties I began to discover the comfort that food and eating out would bring. It became a pacifier. I need something to hold on to. Food to the mouth is like a pacifier. Anything we put in the mouth is done to feel love. When a child is an infant they should get that love and nurturing at the mother’s breast. And as they are weaned from her breast and begin to be able to understand a few basic things, they need to be taught the love of a Father – their heavenly Father and their natural dads.

Many people grow up without that ideal situation of love in their homes. Hence we have a world filled with addicts. They are looking for love and acceptance. They are looking for something to numb the pain in their hearts. When we look at a person who is overweight, like I once was, the first thing I think is that they must be hurting. For some reason they are out of control of themselves and they eat to comfort themselves. Drinkers and druggers do the same thing. Even those addicted to pornography, sex, shopping or gambling are looking for something to divert their attention from the thing that really is bothering them.

At the root of it all, it is fear. Those fears come in many shapes and sizes. It is the fear that if they stripped away the pacifier, they would be sitting there alone and naked. But let’s think about the Bible that the Lord had written specifically to speak to us while we dwell on the earth. It is full of perfect love from the beginning to the end. He has shown us over and over again that He loves us by the actions He has taken. With God, His love is not mere empty words.

If a person is born again and still battling with addiction, they need to understand God’s perfect love. He has shown it, said it and demonstrated it over and over again. So if a person who is saved still thinks they are not loved, in reality they are calling God a liar. It is to say, “God, I do not really feel like You love me. I am just not sure. I need more proof.” For that person, there is a serious problem. We cannot look at His perfect love demonstrated in His Son Jesus and ever wonder if He loves us. That is to make Him out to be a liar. God is not a man that He can lie.

One of the things I have come to learn about love more than ever in my life recently is that love has nothing to do with feelings or emotions. It is “more than a feeling.” Love is an action. True love is demonstrated by what someone does to or for someone else. Gooey feelings in the pit of our stomachs when are attracted to someone are not feelings of love. They are emotional responses to the situation or person we are dealing with. So if we carve out the human, ever fluctuating, often unstable feelings and emotions, and plug in the truth of what God has said and done, we can walk in absolute faith that God really does love us.

I think one of the hurdles I had to jump over was feeling like God didn’t love me and was not pleased with me when I messed up and sinned. Since then I have come to learn that He always loves me and it has nothing to do with what I do or don’t do. Does He approve of my sin? Of course not. But He still loves me. Think of a loving parent (whether you have had one or not) and how much they love their kids. When the child blows it and does something wrong, does the parent stop loving and caring for that child? No way!

Well if a human can love a child like that, how much more does our Father in heaven love us? When we sin, His goal is to restore us and cleanse us from the propensity to sin. He wants to bring us up to the best place - in the peace and assurance of His love. He is good all the time, and His love never fails. Let’s review a couple of verses. If you have thought for one minuet that He does not love you – think again! Meditate of these verses until they sink as far down in your spirit that they can go…

Romans 5:5

Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Romans 8:31-39

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?³³ Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

³⁷ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Ephesians 2:4-7

⁴ But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶ and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

Ephesians 3:14-19

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, ¹⁶ that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷ that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— ¹⁹ to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

2 Thessalonians 3:5

Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

⁴ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails.

These are just a few verses that show the love of God - where it comes from and what it does. God is love. He is nothing but love. Now our part is to receive that love. If you have had trouble with that, why not go to Him in prayer right now and repent for not believing in His love for you. Ask Him anything you need to ask Him, but take a moment to thank Him for loving you so much. Keep walking in that knowledge and it will bring you up to new levels of faith in your life. Work the words of God down deep into your heart. Think of it like kneading some bread dough. Work it, press it in, turn it over and keep pressing on it until it is thoroughly mixed into your heart, mind and soul. Say it all the time. “God loves me. He is for me. He will never leave me or forsake me. God is always on my side. God’s love will never fail for me.” That is how you can make the word work and bring you into the full assurance that He really does love you my friends.