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| I love you, Lord, my strength. |
| —Psalm 18:1 |
Do you remember the first time you summoned the courage to tell the person you were dating that you loved him or her? Did you blurt it out and then freeze, wondering what the object of your love would say?
Maybe you were the recipient of such a declaration of love and it caught you off guard. You were shocked. Your brain went into overdrive trying to find an appropriate response.
Let me ask you another question: How did you feel the first time the Holy Spirit revealed to you that God truly loves you? How did you respond?
I am truly blessed to be able to say that I grew up always knowing that God loved me. Raised in an Evangelical Christian home, I literally cannot remember a time when I did not know that God loved me.
In contrast, I do remember the first time—it was October of 1956—when I recognized that I actually needed God’s love. I suddenly knew I was a sinner who needed a Savior. And, by then I had heard many times that God loved me. In fact, I had heard again and again that God loved me enough to send His Son to pay the penalty for my sin.
At once, in that moment in time, I was both frightened to death and enormously relieved. I needed God’s love and He was more than willing to give me His love because He truly did love me.
You see, dear ones, in each of our lives, God has made the first move toward us. He has told us He loves us first. Then, He waits patiently to see how we will respond.
Here’s how the Psalmist responded. King David declares his love for God in Psalm 18:1-2:
I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
God loves us. He waits for our response. How will we receive His love this day? That’s the key question for the beginning of this new day.
Based on a blog originally posted on Wednesday, December 30, 2015
