Needle Little Love

Needle little love.  Catchy name.  One of my friends came up with it.  As you probably have figured out, it’s a play on words - need a little love.  Who doesn’t need love?  I need love and I know that you all do too.  Everyone needs love.  People who say they don’t need love are lying. So, everyone needs love.  Well, isn’t it just a lucky coincidence that God is love?    So, when we say we need love, what we are really needing is God. 

We hear things that we already know.  Jesus loves you.  Yes, we know that.  And I am not going to tell you anything that you don’t already know.  Hopefully you will walk away with a greater sense of how much Jesus loves you.  We all know the “love” chapter - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.”  Then verse 13 “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

I may say that I love someone but when I put my love up against verses 4-8, I can’t honestly say that I have kept all of it.  Sometimes I don’t suffer very long - I’m impatient.  Sometimes I do get envious, sometimes I want recognition, sometimes I provoke an argument, sometimes my ego gets in the way.  Sometimes my love fails.  But I know that God never fails.

I John 4:7-8 tells us specifically that God is love: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God, for God is love”.  And again in 1 John 4:16: “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

Twice in the same chapter John says that God is love.  Not just that God loves us.  Not just that God has love.  But that God is love.   There is a song “Your Love is Extravagant” by Casting Crowns – it has these words: “Your love is extravagant, Your friendship it is intimate.  I find I’m moving to the rhythms of your grace, your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place. Your love is extravagant.  Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin.  No greater love have I ever known, You considered me a friend.  Capture my heart again.”

That should be our prayer - that God would capture our heart again and again and again - like falling in love for the first time.  God’s love is extravagant.  He spared no expense in showing us His love.  My prayer is that we can also have an extravagant love.  Love is the most precious of all the gifts we have and yet it does not have a monetary value.  We can afford to be extravagant.  Amen to love? Amen!