Marking God's Love for us in Every Season

“And may you, having been [deeply] rooted and [securely] grounded in love,  be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints (God’s people) the width and length and height and depth of His love [fully experiencing that amazing, endless love];  and [that you may come] to know [practically, through personal experience] the love of Christ which far surpasses [mere] knowledge [without experience], that you may be filled up [throughout your being] to all the fullness of God [so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself].” (Ephesians 3:17b-19, AMP)

I haven’t mentioned this in a long time, but if you were keeping up on Soul Deep in February, you found out that I am currently pregnant. Right now, as I write this, I am 34 weeks along, so coming into the last home stretch. At this point, we’ve painted a nursery, set up the furniture, celebrated with a shower, and now Sam and I are nesting in full force.

Every day, I tackle a small project getting ready for our daughter. One day, I wash, fold, and put away all her clothes, the next I set up her changing table, then sanitize and find a place for her bottles and pacifiers– every day is a new chore and I’m excited to do it. As I break down packaging, sort, sanitize, decorate, and find a place for everything, I pray. I ask God to grow her healthily inside me– body and mind. I ask Him to make my body ready for a safe delivery. I ask Him to give Sam and I the wisdom to raise her and the grace to teach her how deeply she is loved by God; to hold her close to His heart every day of her life.

As I do this, I can’t help but reflect on what an example it is of how God has labored and meticulously prepared for my own life. How He planned and set out every piece needed to bring me close to Him and craft my life for His glory. How He carefully set everything in place with deep love, thinking of me the whole time well before I could even understand it.

Because just like my love for my daughter runs deep before she’s even born, God’s love for me was still deeper before I was even conceived. His love for you was still deeper even at the beginning of time.

Just the way a mother and father nest and ready their home for the arrival of their baby, God took the same care for you. And just like a baby doesn’t fully understand the love of their parents at the moment of birth, we don’t see the full extent of God’s ever-present love for us in every moment.

But it’s there.

And as we grow in faith, we begin to see how deep and wide His love is for us. And the more we grow in and seek to know the Lord through scripture, the more we can see not just through mere knowledge, but through experience, just how vast that love has always been for us. 

How awesome that just like a child, we don’t have to wonder how much our Heavenly Father loves us. If we look, it is evermore apparent in all the ways He has planned for us and poured out His love for us. He sent His own Son as a sacrifice so we could be set free from sin. He shed His blood so we could have eternal life. He gave His all so we could stand firm and assured of that love.

I think it’s so special how God can illustrate His love for us in a deeply personal way in each new season in our lives. There’s always a new way for Him to communicate to us new depths of His love that have always been there to wash over us, we just needed to look and connect with it. 

So my encouragement for you today is to observe the season of life you’re in and then look around. How is God showing you new depths of His love? How is God giving you a freshly personal way to stand confident in the fact that He has always planned and pursued your heart? 

Because there are signs of it everywhere. If you look around at your life, there are tender touches of it all around. Don’t forget to take a moment and thank Him for it. Ask Him to make you constantly aware of every piece He’s laid out in preparation for your life and bring you into a deeper understanding of His love for you. Seeing and marking that love is important so you can be filled to brimming and live flooded with the surety that God the Creator, the Savior, and the King loves you richly.