Reckless Love

“There’s no shadow you won’t light up

Mountain you won’t climb up, 

Coming after me

There’s no wall you won’t kick down

Lie you won’t tear down

Coming after me.”

-“Reckless Love” -Cory Asbury (Bethel Music)

Do you remember the feeling of falling in love? As a teen, it can “feel” pretty overwhelming. You actively pursue your love interest, memorizing their features, what they like and dislike. Every moment with them makes your heart skip and your face cramps from smiling so much. It feels like your love has no limits, you would do anything for him/her to show them you love them. And beneath all the emotions and hormones, you believe that you will love that person forever…..until you discover that they don’t want your forever. Pain like nothing else, as if your heart burst into a million pieces, leaves you feeling like the world is at its end. The future you had envisioned disappears along with the one you couldn’t stop thinking about.

In time, you accept the loss, you let go of your pain and realize that the world isn’t ending. You think of that person less and less until it’s as if they came from a different time, a different life. You fall out of love, the one thing you believed was impossible.

If only we knew we were loved by one who never stops loving. Pursued by one who never stops pursuing. Many of us don’t realize that we are in the greatest love story ever told, in fact, we are the bride in this great story. An infinite all-powerful God, romancing a fallen world….what reckless love.

He adores us even as His heart is breaking, His love has no boundaries, no conditions. We simply can’t escape it. And yet no one knows rejection like He does…the world has proven time and again that it’s not a faithful bride. God came to the earth through His Son Jesus, to be with us, and we killed Him. And what did He give us in return? Did He abandon us and fall out of love with us? No, He surrendered His son on the cross and in doing so, He paid the ransom we couldn’t pay and gave us so many blessings that we’re still discovering!

I’m reminded of the story of Hosea and Gomer. God told Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman to symbolize the unfaithfulness of Israel towards God. So Hosea marries Gomer and she soon returns to the life of an adulterer, sleeping with other men besides her husband. This life leads to Gomer being taken as a slave.

I can imagine this being Gomer’s all-time low. What man would love her after what she has done? Standing on a step with a price on her head, no longer a woman but something to be used. And then she spots him, Hosea, the only man who called her wife, pushing his way through the crowd toward her, ready to buy her back.

God told Hosea, just as I love my people Israel, you must love your wife again…

What reckless love.

No matter what you have done, God is always there ready to take you back. And He doesn’t come to buy you with coins but with His only Son Jesus, who is willing to take your place, to pay the ultimate price for you. I promise you, no human can make you whole, no husband or wife can fulfil your every need and desire for love. Only God can satisfy your soul, and He does so not because He has to, but because He wants to. We are wanted, desired, sought after by God…. that, is reckless love.

“Then Jesus told this parable: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep!”

Luke 15:3-6

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