2. God ordains for us to experience the pain of temporary loneliness so we would esteem and celebrate his eternal love all the more.
God knows how tempting it is for each one of us to try and replace vertical love with horizontal love. So, in grace, he lets us taste the sourness of lost or failed horizontal love so that we would seek and savor the sweetness of his vertical love (Romans 5:1-5 points to that connection).
It’s in these moments when human love fails that we begin to grasp the incalculable value of his eternal love that never fails. It’s in the pain of human rejection that we begin to treasure the fact that God’s love is so strong that he will never leave or forsake you no matter what.
You see, God will allow what we’re feeding on to leave us empty, not because he hates us, but because he loves us and wants us to learn to feed our souls on the only thing that can truly satisfy—his love.
So, celebrate the human love that you have been blessed to experience, but don’t let your heart stop there. Run to the Lover whom that human love points to and let your heart feed deeply on his divine, eternal, vertical love.
Remember, it’s not the Valentine’s Day card that loves you—no, it’s there to remind you of the love of the person who chose to lovingly address it to you. So it is with the love of Jesus.
This resource is from Paul Tripp Ministries. For additional resources, visit www.paultripp.com. Used with permission.
