the one thing

God has been teaching me a lot about love - His love, the love Christ has for me, the love I'm supposed to have for Him and for others, how all these loves are connected and what love means for me as a disciple - in how I'm supposed to live it out and what the implications are for the church and the communities God has placed me in. My thoughts about all that God has been showing me will have to wait for another day, but what I can tell you now is that God is answering my prayer. :-) I have been praying that Ephesians 3:17-19, which says -

May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God Himself. (The Living Bible)

will become a reality in my life, in the church, in our community, and the world.

And, I can see where He's answering the prayer in my life and giving me a fresh perspective on not only His love, but how to love others. I admit that God's love is not always one of the easiest things for me to accept or comprehend. I've struggled at times with the reality of His love and just how strong it really is. When I begin to doubt His love, I just feel like the man whose son was healed of an evil spirit in Mark 9 and cry out in desperation, "I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!"

I heard a song this morning that reminded me of the incredible love of God. My mom first told me about this song a few months before Thanksgiving. I listened for it on my favorite radio station, but never heard it. Then, the very morning we drove into El Paso to visit my parents at Thanksgiving, literally minutes from their house (I think the song ended as we pulled into the driveway), the song that I had never heard played on a radio station in El Paso. And even though I didn't know all the lyrics, the one phrase my mom had said to listen for was, "You really love me like You say You do." :-) It's a song by Paul Colman called The One Thing. I can really relate to it because I know I've questioned a lot of things in my life, but God always reminds me that His love is constant, unchanging, unwavering, bigger than my mind will ever be able to comprehend, strong enough and big enough to cover all of my failures, and will never end. (I know most of those words all mean the same thing, but oh well.) I continue to pray that the words in Ephesians will become a reality in all our lives.


Paul Colman, The One Thing

Here I am
In a river of questions
Can I pour my heart out to a listening ear?
I see this life
It's valley's and mountains
And I think of all the roads that brought me here
Oh that brought me here

I've questioned my reasons
The life I'm living
I've questioned my ability
To judge wrong from right
I've questioned all the things
that I've ever called certain
My race, my religion, my country, my mind

But the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Yea the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Hold me Hold me
So Hold me

Well I've questioned my significance
Meaning and relevance
Does the work I'm doing really matter at all?
Well I've questioned my friendships
Alliance, dependence
Who will still be here when I fall?

But the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Yea the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Hold me Hold me
So Hold me

Only one thing doesn't change
Only one thing stays the same
All I know at the end of the day is your love remains

But the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Yea the one thing I don't question is You
You really love me like you say you do
Hold me Hold me
So Hold me