Love That’s Better Than Life

I have been told and even experienced the truth of the teaching that God blesses obedience. Today I have joy in the Lord over a weekend spent in His service. I am tired but it is a “good tired” because God blessed me all weekend as He taught through me and He continues to bless me as I rest from the work today.

For months I have been praying that the Lord would prepare the hearts of the women that He would bring to this Women’s Winter Retreat of a local church. Prepared hearts came! These ladies ministered to each other, sister to sister in Christ, mother to daughter and daughter-in-law and daughter to mother. They ranged in age from an early 20’s Mom with her three month old daughter to an 89 year old lady with her walker and very little eye sight. The Lord was clearly there as well.

The Lord had prepared me to speak and teach and minister as He would lead me. The response to God’s Word was great and glorifying. Even the 89 year old came to me on Sunday morning to say that she had been convicted by God about her lack of prayer since losing so much of her sight. Another sister told me that she had seen how her vanity was keeping her from using a gift God had given her. Yet another was convicted of the need to forgive a friend in a minor argument that she had made too much of. This eclectic group was silly and fun at times but they were serious about the Word of God and responded to His teaching from it as they listened.

The theme for the weekend was from Psalm 63:2-5, “God’s Love is Better Than Life.” In that Psalm David tells God that He would praise His name with joyful lips – this was in spite of the fact that he was in the desert running from his own son, afraid for His life. David said that he would meditate on God’s faithfulness in the watches of the night and remember God from when he could be in the sanctuary. The lesson on remembering God’s faithfulness in lonely or fearful times was not lost on these ladies as they discussed our economic future as a nation. God is faithful even when, like David, all we see is doom and gloom. Our faith needs to look forward to how He will use this time and His people to bring glory to Himself.

The overarching theme of this women’s ministry for the year has been “Cultivating an Undivided Heart” from Psalm 86. It was a great experience for me to see how God used that theme as well to show me and these ladies that if we want to or expect to live in His love that’s better than life, then we must have an undivided heart. We must learn to trust God and God alone. If we have other idols in our lives that are more important to us than God, then we cannot expect that we will experience the Only True God’s love as better than life. He will never leave us nor forsake us but when we move away from Him, when we allow something else to get between Him and us, we lose the blessing of a life focused on Him.

In January of 2008 I was studying God’s Word in a Sunday School class and clearly saw from God’s Word in Jeremiah 1:7 that this was His instruction to me, that I would “go wherever He would send me and say whatever He told me to say.” Today I am living in love that’s better than life, my joyful lips are praising God to again have been given the privilege of watching Him work and having seen His word in action among His people. What a blessing!