Devotionals for the Heart: God's Intentional Love for Humankind

An Intentional Love
A devotional by Jessica Brodie

Have you ever created something you came to care about so much that it almost hurts?

As a writer, I fall in love with the characters I create. They become like family. I feel their pain, their joys, their fears and sorrows. It’s the same way with my kids. For those for you who are parents, this might be super obvious, but they feel like an extension of my body and soul. I’d literally walk through fire for them, take on every hurt or illness or agony for them, without question.

I just started reading through the Bible again, and that’s what strikes me about the start of Genesis—the intentionality and love with which God so clearly handcrafted the world and everything in it. Personally, I like to switch up the versions of the Bible I read just to get a different perspective, and the language in the New Living Translation feels like poetry as I reread the beautiful account of our Lord creating something out of simple nothingness.

“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:2-3 NLT).

Can you imagine? Out of darkness suddenly came glorious, magnificent light! The Bible doesn’t tell us what this looked like, only that it was “good,” but I imagine a soft, soothing glow spreading across the dark waters, gradually growing stronger and stronger until it reaches a crescendo of pure and blissful brightness. I wonder how God felt. Did a new song of glee brim in His heart? Did He want to dance like a little kid, exuberant and carefree?

Then, the Bible tells us, God kept on creating. He created the sky the next day, and then the land the next, brimming with lush vegetation. Next came the stars and the sun and the moon, and then God “set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:17-18).

He created birds and livestock, wild animals and fish in the sea, then human beings, and these last ones, us, were extra-special. As the Bible tells us, humans God created “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). Then he blessed it all, tasked us with stewardship over the earth and everything in it, and “rested from all his work” (Genesis 2:2).

What strikes me is the intention God had with all he created. He didn’t just create us, but created us in his own image. He didn’t just create and let it be, but He created and looked it over, reflecting on its “goodness.” That’s significant!

We—God’s people, God’s creation—are no happy accident but a magnificently handcrafted and intentional design set into motion by the Lord God Almighty. That’s love quite literally personified.

I think that’s why it is so important to remember what Jesus told us in Matthew 22:37-40: “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

In John 13:34-35, Jesus says, “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

If God loved us so much that He personally handcrafted the world, and humans in His very image, of course it should follow that the two greatest commandments are to love Him back and to love each other.

This year, we have a new opportunity, a fresh start, when it comes to love. Every one of us who professes to love God needs to take this seriously. This commandment to love Him and love each other is not a suggestion but an order. We are to love even our enemies, Jesus tells us…to love each other as ourselves, caring for our neighbor in the same way we would care for our own children or parents.

For that is how we love him, Jesus says: whatever we do for “one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

In the New Year 2023, can we do this? Can we take a moment every day to step outside of our own naturally selfish inclinations and look around to care for others in our midst, others we don’t even know? Can we smile at strangers, share our money and our food with our neighbors, and lend a hand just because we can?

That is my challenge this year. I hope you will join me. In the spirit of the One who created us all, let’s each of us recognize our shared community in the Lord and love extravagantly, generously, and freely in honor of that perfect love.

Song of Reflection: “The Maker” by Chris August. Listen to it here.

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Author Bio:

Jessica Brodie is an award-winning journalist, author, blogger, editor, writing coach, and devotional writer with thousands of articles to her name.

Since 2010, she has served as the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism, which has won 123 journalism awards during her tenure. She is the author of Feed My Sheep: A 40-Day Devotional to Develop a Heart for Hunger Ministry (2019) and More Like Jesus: A Devotional Journey (2018) and the editor of a number of other books from her newspaper’s Advocate Press, which she helped found in 2017.

She has won more than 100 writing awards and is a seasoned speaker and frequent contributor to Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, and BibleStudyTools.com, among many others. She has a weekly faith blog at JessicaBrodie.com and is part of the team at Wholly Loved Ministries, with her work included in many of their devotionals and Bible studies.

Brodie holds a Master of Arts in English, and she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in communications/print journalism from Florida International University. Born and raised in Miami, Brodie now lives in Lexington, South Carolina, just outside Columbia. She has also lived in Ohio and in the mountains of western North Carolina. She and her husband, Matt Brodie, have a blended family of four teenage children and stepchildren.

Brodie has written several novels and is actively seeking publication through her agent Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency. Her novel The Memory Garden won the 2018 Genesis contest for Contemporary Fiction from American Christian Fiction Writers, and her novel Tangled Roots won a third place Foundation Award in Contemporary Romance at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference in 2019. She is finishing the third in the series, Hidden Seeds, now.

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Connect with Jessica:
Website: https://www.jessicabrodie.com/
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Devotionals for the Heart: What happens when you grow to know God

God’s Astounding Grace
A devotional by Karen Marstaller

“All Your works shall give thanks to You, O Lord, and all Your saints shall bless You!”

—Psalm 145:10 (ESV)

As a teenager I was a member of our high school band. Our director believed in giving his students many varied experiences outside of the high desert valley where we lived. One of those trips took us to the coast where we would be competing against other bands. Few of us had ever seen salt water, so it was a big shift for most of us.

On the day set aside for our little jaunt, we packed up our suitcases and instruments, loaded everything onto the buses, and set out for our destination. With all the windows down, we could hear a low-pitched roar as we neared the water, but we couldn’t see anything yet. We had to leave our big yellow transports and walk the rest of the way to the water’s edge. There were about a hundred of us trudging through the sand, so there wasn’t anything to see except the back of the person in front of me. Once our group topped the dunes, though, most of my fellow band members took off running. That’s when I looked up.

For the first time in my life, I was astounded. There were no words for me, only feelings. My senses were alive in a way I’d never experienced. My hair streamed behind me while my toes felt as though they were kissed by the sand, and I was riveted to the spot. I licked my lips to taste the faint saltiness, and the very air around me seemed to be caught up in a whirling mélange of fish, sand, and water. The overwhelming sound of the pounding surf filled me with a strange mixture of jubilation and wonder. And as I gulped in the fresh air, it dawned on me that part of the tingling sensation was my own heart, beating in time with the waves at my feet.

Years later, my first encounter with the sea was brought full circle. Just as I had pored over my geography books as a kid, filling my mind with information about Cape Cod and Puget Sound, I’d also been reading the Bible with its stories of David, Jonah, and Jesus. And just as all my book learning hadn’t come close to preparing me to meet the ocean, all the Bible studies were just words on the pages until the day the Lord allowed me to understand what His Word means.

The New Testament is filled with references about knowing Jesus. For years I had been reading and underlining every phrase about the sureness of knowing the Lord. I didn’t know Him yet, I just knew about Him, in the same way that I knew about the Straits of Gibraltar and Magellan, without ever seeing them in person.

But one day, the burning desire to know overwhelmed me, and I finally prayed, “God, if You’re really real, show me.” On that very day, the Lord Jesus became my Savior, and God became my loving Heavenly Father.

There I was, astounded for the second time in my life. But this time, it was so much more. I stood awash in forgiveness, a sweetness I’d never known. With my arms stretched wide, I was able to “taste and see that the Lord is good” like Psalm 34:8 says. God’s Word, the Bible, became real to me, just as the sea had so many years before. More importantly, the Creator of the sea and the Lord of my life became reality, as well.

In Matthew 16, Jesus asked His disciples two questions: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” There were several answers to His first question, but Simon Peter answered the second question with the resounding declaration, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16 ESV)

It is that declaration of faith that will always astound us. Here we are, sinners, far from God and ignorant of His majesty. Yet we are welcomed into God’s family when we believe in Jesus. As His children we are not only saved; we are accepted into God’s heart of grace.

So, we stand and behold the works of God. All the senses are tingling as we open our Bibles. We fall to our faces as we see the Lord “high and lifted up” in Isaiah 6:1, and we worship with the Revelation 4:8 (ESV) angels as they cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

And as we breathe in deeply, the Lord fine-tunes our hearts, so they beat in time with His.

Let’s Pray: Heavenly God, we praise You for You are the core, the very essence of life. We worship You, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. In Jesus’s Name I pray. Amen.

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Note from Alexis:

Karen’s devotional message today reminds me of “The Maker” song by Chris August! Listen to this beautiful melody about seeing God all around us in nature, here.

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Author Bio:

Karen Marstaller is a retired high school teacher who spent most of her career challenging creative students to write. Her heart is for her readers. 

She writes to encourage them, to make them laugh, to show them that life is a beautiful journey, and regardless of their past, to show them that there is joy ahead if they will just keep looking.

Karen and her husband live in central Texas in a sweet little home that they completely remodeled. They enjoy spending time with their family, which includes seven precious grandchildren.

Most of all, Karen writes in obedience to the command to love your neighbor, to offer a cup of water to those who are dying of thirst, and to comfort others with the comfort she has received.

You can reach Karen by emailing her at this address: klmarstaller@gmail.com

Thankful Thursday: The Maker Loves Me

It’s Thursday and I’m thankful that The Maker loves me!

Most of this entire week, direct evidence of God caring for me was revealed in so many wonderful ways! I knew that my post today had to be about this very topic and truth of how the Maker (God) loves me, you, and all of His creation—from the Evergreen trees and your favorite fruit, to you and me—the love of God for His children is beyond words.

So here’s what happened:

On the evening of Monday, Aug. 24, I received an e-mail message from Jennifer Slattery. She sent the message to remind me that my guest post for her blog was scheduled for this week Thursday (Aug. 27) and that she needed my post that day (Aug. 24). 

Now I was totally unprepared—or so I thought because I forgot—but then I remembered the idea that dropped into my mind as I was going to sleep the night before. Facebook “celebrity look-a-like” tests were on my mind because I’d seen a lot of those in the previous week and then the light bulb turned on (I got an idea): Why not write something about how we are made in God’s image? God is way better than a celebrity! So at exactly 12:51 a.m., I typed my thoughts into a notepad application in my phone.

Here’s a snippet of what I typed: “People want to be like stars and so to resemble a star is to be connected to greatness but the God of the Universe made you in His image and He would move mountains just to connect with you! You resemble the Almighty God! It does not get any better than that!” Voila! I remembered this and so on Aug. 24 in the afternoon, about an hour after reading Jennifer’s e-mail, I went to work on writing the devotional about being made in God’s image and I finished within two hours! Would you like to read it? It was posted on Jennifer’s blog today. You can read it here.

My second and final note of thankfulness happened today! I was shopping at one of my favorite stores for the perfect pair of shoes to wear to my brother’s wedding. I went to a store known for its great shoes at low prices first but the shoe(s) didn’t fit. So I visited one more store and found the perfect sandals! They are gorgeous! 

Now how I found these sandals are where the testimony starts. I searched high and low (quite literally, I went through the entire store looking at all levels of the shelves that made the wall—from the shelves above my head to the shelves below my knees). Just when I was about to give up (after trying on at least five shoes that did not fit my feet), my attention was directed (yes, I believe God directed me) to a few fancy shoes laid out on the floor by a woman who looked like she too was searching for the perfect shoe. A pair of beautiful beige sandals decorated with a gorgeous flower of the same shade, captivated my attention. So I went over to where the lady sat and commented on the sandals. “Oh, you like these?” she said in a tone that made me think she was waiting for me to come over and comment on the beige shoes. “Here,” she said as she lifted one of the sandals off the floor and handed it to me. “Ask him.”

The “him” she was referring to was the sales attendant who stood nearby. I followed directions and long story short, left the shoe store with the perfect pair of sandals for my brother’s wedding! The sandals complement my dress so I am beyond elated!

Wrapping up this Thankful Thursday post, I’d like for you to watch the official video for Chris August’s song, “The Maker.” I am head-over-heels in love with this song ever since hearing it for the first time, earlier this year! I believe when you listen to it, you’ll feel hugged by God because it’s about how much God loves you and will reveal His goodness to you because you are one of His children and He takes care of His own! Read Philippians 4:19.

What are you thankful for today?