God's Love

Jesus has created in me a true love for people and a desire to reach out to them. Especially the one's who feel trapped in a society that brings them nothing but heartache. The ones who feel there is no hope and no love out there for them.

Things are going to happen this year that will create doubt in a young generation's mind. When we tell them how there is hope in their future because God loves them, they will be skeptical. People are lonely and will go to extremes to find someone to love them. Sometimes it leads them to a happy life, but too often it justs lead them to another dead end and they go off in search of someone else. Some people will hang on until it kills them, no matter how abusive someone is to them all because for a few moments they feel loved.

When I was 17 years old, I was in a physically and mentally abusive relationship. I stayed in it for almost 2 years before I finally had the courage to say that he couldn't come back home after he was forced to go into rehab for alcoholics. I know if you've ever watched the show Cops, you've seen the wife or girlfriend sobbing and pleading not to take "him" to jail and thought what an idiot. If you've never been there, it is very hard to understand why some people will go to great lengths to hide their abuse. Some of them are somewhat brainwashed into thinking they can't survive on their own, but I think the real truth for most of them is they don't want to be alone. Another real truth is that they can't see the way out.

For me it was a combination of things. It took me a long time to figure out that he was an alcoholic. My father was an alcoholic and had died when I was very young. That was the extent of my knowledge of what an alcoholic was like. By the time I did figure it out, I was always promised the very next day, depending on how bad the beating was it would sometimes be accompanied by huge boquets of flowers and/or dinner out, that he would quit drinking and never lay a hand on me again. When he was sober, he was the most wonderful person to be around. Somehow, I knew that everytime he made that promise he really meant it, but he was too weak to fight to keep it.

All these years I haven't been upset with what he did to me, I was more upset with what he did to my daughter. She had to grow up without knowing him because he put alcohol above her. When I started living my life for God again, I forgave him. Recently, I had a situation come up to where I had to call him. I even tried talking other people into calling him for me, but they wouldn't do it. Before I picked up the phone I prayed that God would give me the words to say. He asked how she was doing and I mentioned that she had been going to church with me. In tears he told me that he'd been praying that I would call him.

I believe that God has chosen certain people and said, "that one is mine." About three years ago, he was saved and has been able to remain sober. Since then he remarried and has for the first time in his life known true love and happiness. He prayed for three years that God would put it on my heart to let his daughter contact him again. It has been almost ten years since he last saw her. He now has a recent picture of her and they have spoken on the phone a couple of times.

I think that by us being able to forgive, that it opens the door for God to work. When you love like God tells us to love, you can forgive no matter what it is that someone has done. I have no doubt that God's hand was on me at that time in my life because He knew that someday I would get to the place I am at now. There is no shame in my life anymore because God has used that situation to result in His glory. Satan tore a family apart, but they all still came to Jesus. An alcoholic that no one thought was hope for and a woman who was abused were healed. A relationship that was destroyed is being restored. There is nothing that compares to God's love and there is no one who is undeserving of it.