An Everlasting Love

When our sons were teenagers, they tested every boundary that we set, making sure that the boundaries never moved, changed, or disappeared.  On a daily basis, they set out to determine whether we still meant what we had said only the day before.

One son, in particular, had issues with curfew.  He always wanted to see if we really expected him home at midnight.  My husband had an unnatural ability to wait until the next morning to deal with any issues, sleeping peacefully as he waited.  I, on the other hand, sure that God had created me to be his little helper, especially with these two boys, felt compelled to wait up on our sons, challenge them with any lateness, ground them for the rest of their lives, and, then, to lament before the Lord all of my failures as a mother, for the rest of the night.  One night, however, God spoke to my heart about a different message to our son – a message of unconditional love.  

Do not misunderstand; it was not a message of approval, but a message of Biblical love, the Jeremiah 31:3 love, the everlasting kind.  Think about it.  The Lord God of all creation chooses to love His children with an everlasting love, a love that lasts forever, a love that has no end.  In other words, once you enter into a relationship with Him, there is nothing you can do to make Him stop loving you.  That type of love seems beyond our comprehension.  We live in a world of conditional love based on emotion, approval, profit, and appearance.  Yet, God challenges us to more.  God’s love is more than and different from approval, according to Hebrews 12.  Sometimes, it even involves discipline.  However, it is the one constant in the life of a believer, beginning with God’s sacrifice of His Son.  In John 3:16, God says that He so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever would believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  God’s love is not an emotion.  It is not passive.  It is an active choice, moment by moment, and day by day.  It is a lifestyle, and all believers in Jesus Christ are commanded to walk in love, Ephesians 5:2.  Paul said it so well in II Corinthians 12:15 when he said:  And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.  In other words, God’s love is doing what is best for us, regardless of the cost.  We are called to love one another in the same way, doing what is best for the other, regardless of the cost to ourselves and without expectation of love in return.  What a challenge, and, yet, it is best exemplified by a Savior who loved me so much, He was willing to die for me.

That night, God moved my heart to reassure my son of my everlasting love for him.  As he slipped in the door about an hour late, hoping against hope that I had fallen asleep, but knowing I hadn’t, he prepared for the usual confrontation.  Instead, he found me on my knees praying for him, as I wept.  The Lord, then, brought to mind the story in Acts 9 of Saul, soon to become the apostle Paul, was on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians.  A blinding light appeared, as Saul fell to his feet, and he heard a voice asking, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  In response to Saul’s question as to Whom the voice belonged, he heard, “I am Jesus Whom you are persecuting.”  However, a strange statement followed:  It is hard for you to kick against the sharp goads.  In other words, when we struggle against God’s will, we are, often, the ones who suffer the most pain.

I, then, told our son about two illustrations about Biblical love that God used to make a profound impact on me.  Years earlier, we had taken our children to an alligator farm while on a vacation trip to Florida.  Not long after that, I read a report of a small boy falling into one of the alligator pits on a similar farm.  The newspaper reported that his dad was haunted by the sight of his son dying in that pit.  Something ripped through my heart as I read the report, praying that it would have been impossible for me to look down at my son’s plight without thrusting myself into the battle for his life.  

Later, I read another story about a son and an alligator.  It was a summer day, and children were playing in a bar ditch behind their homes.  One of the moms could hear the children splashing in the water of the bayou as they had done for years.  Her son had just turned eight, and they had given him a snorkeling set for his birthday, complete with flippers and a mask.  Suddenly, she heard the sounds of the children turn from play to terror.  As she ran from her home, she could see all of the children, screaming as they lined the bank of the water, with the exception of her son, whom she saw face down in the water continuing to snorkel.  Because his face was submerged with his mask on, he could not hear the children yelling warnings of the eight-foot long gator gliding up behind him.  As the alligator clamped his jaws on one of the boy’s legs, he was startled and began kicking violently, landing one kick directly on the snout of the alligator.  The gator released the boy’s leg for just a moment, soon clamping down on the other leg.  As the horrifying scene unfurled before the mom’s eyes, she said she thought of only one thing:  Rescuing her son.  She slid down the bank of the canal into the water and firmly clasped her son’s outstretched arms, as he flailed in the water.  She said it seemed an eternity that her son was stretched between the attacking alligator and her feeble hold on his outstretched arms.  She only knew one thing:  If the alligator were going to take her son, he would have to take her, too.  Finally, as she wrenched with all of her might, her son’s flipper lodged in the jaw of the gator, and she was able to pull him free.  It had been two years since the incident, and her son had gone through multiple surgeries to remove the damaged skin and tissue of his legs.  All of the scars on his body were gone – except for ten – the ten scars from her fingernails on his arms, where she had held on for life, as she battled for her son and his life.

As I shared this with my son, I told him that there was nothing he could do to cause me to stop loving him.  Though he might come through life with small scars caused because I would not release him to the world and his rebellion, I would never stop loving him, praying for him, and holding to him as long as there was breath in me.  I would love him with an everlasting love, doing what was best for him regardless of the cost to me.  After all, my Father loves me with an everlasting love.  There are scars where His love pursued me in my rebellion, but, praise His name, He has never let me go!  

Have you experienced the everlasting love of God through His Son?  What precious peace it is to know there is nothing I can do to make Him stop loving me.

© 2010 Gerry Sisk

(04/28/10)