How to Find Unfailing Love

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Song of Solomon, Day 24"

"Loving Those in the Margins"

"Three Ways to Find Your Million Dollar Mate" (blog post)

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Dannah Gresh: Okay, I want you to think of the cheapest, sappiest representation there could ever be of . . . love. 

[sappy, classical music]

Rebekah, ah, that’s too nice. But I want really schmaltzy! 

[cheesy music]

There you go, much better!

Maybe when you think of sappy, fake love, you might imagine the bad poetry in a cheesy greeting card.

Editor:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
You’re just SO NICE,
I think I love you!

Dannah: Or maybe what comes to mind is something we see a lot around Valentine’s day—heart-shaped candies that proclaim enduring, undying love . . . or not!

[sound of candy hearts spilling onto the table]

Young Woman: This one says, "TEXT ME." (sighs)

Young Man: “YOU’RE HOT.” What?! It tastes the same as “KISS ME!” It’s not even spicy!

Dannah: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host Dannah Gresh, and we are not going to talk about cheesy, fake love today. So, let’s kill the music. 

[music stops]

Thank you.

I’ve travelled around the sun a few times and something I’ve learned is this: those cheap substitutes for love do not satify. In fact, we often find ourselves feeling love-SICK at Valentine’s Day, don’t we? 

The other thing the fake love does is, it divorces us from an understanding of a love that really does fulfill us. So whether you’re looking for love in all the wrong places or just lonely for love . . . whatever the reason may be, you’re in the right place.

I don’t want you to beat yourself up if you’re feeling lonely for love. Proverbs 19:22 tells us that something every person desires and longs for is unfailing love. UNFAILING love! Ever known a love like that?

Well, it’s okay to want it, to desire it. Everyone does. But get this: most of us are looking for it in the wrong place.

We’ll explore that today and get you headed in the right direction so you can experience unfailing love. We’re going to hear today from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Karen Ellis. 

I have a little outline we're going to follow. We’ll explore:

1. The Definition of Love, then
2. The Demonstration of Love, and finally
3. The Direction of our Love: both upward and outward.

So three “D” words: definition, demonstration, and direction. God defines love, He demonstrates His love to us, and then, in response, we direct our love back to Him and out to others. Okay? Let’s go!

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We’ve already made the point that real love is a lot more than bad poetry or candy hearts, as nice as some of those things might be. (I personally like the yellow conversation hearts. They taste like banana. But I digress.) So what is love, really?

We must begin with this principle: love comes from God. First John chapter 4 says God IS love. So if He is love, I believe He gets to define it.

When the New Testament speaks of God’s love for us, it uses the Greek word agape. And here’s where we start to see where unfailing love comes from and what it looks like. 

Agape is concisely expressed when Jesus says this: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Agape is a love that will stop at nothing to express itself to another.

Agape is not a feeling you get when you encounter someone you find lovable; instead, it involves choosing to express love, even—or perhaps especially—when you encounter someone unlovable. It is all about self-denial rather than self-fulfillment. It’s focused on giving rather than on receiving.

Here’s one definition that several pastors and theologians have used.

Love, as defined by God, is a decision to compassionately, righteously, and responsibly seek the wellbeing of another, in ways that lead them to their eternal good.

That’s good! Let me read it again. “Love, as defined by God, is a decision to compassionately, righteously, and responsibly seek the wellbeing of another, in ways that lead them to their eternal good.”

To that definition J. I. Packer adds the concept of self-sacrifice. Here’s how he defined the love of God in his wonderful book Knowing God:

God’s love is an exercise of His goodness towards individual sinners whereby, having identified Himself with their welfare, He has given His Son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy Him in a covenant relation.”

And now we’re moving from the definition of love to God’s demonstration of love.

The apostle Paul said it like this in Romans chapter 5. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” No greater demonstration of love than to have someone sacrifice their very life for you. That’s what Jesus did for you, my friend. Why? To demonstrate His love. 

He loves you. Soak in that.

Can you see how this is so different from the sappy, fake love we see promoted all around us? God doesn’t love us on the condition that we’re really good to Him. No, He loved us while we were His enemies, while we were still sinners. And it cost Jesus His life!

And this love, this price that was paid for us with Christ’s blood, is an unfailing love—the kind I mentioned earlier that we all desire. I mean, Satan fought to keep you from it but Christ stopped at nothing in His mission to love you. His love never fails.

You know the words translated as “unfailing love” in Proverbs 19:22 are found over thirty times in the Old Testament. And never once is the source of that kind of love ever anyone other than God Himself. 

Friend, the love you long for, the love you need, it’s Jesus. It’s God Himself. These words are an invitation from Him to settle under His love. In fact, the Bible calls His love a “banner.” That signifies something that covers us, a symbol of protection. Nestle under that love today, my friend.

Song: “His Banner Over Me” 

I'm my Beloved's and He is mine;
His banner over me is love.
I'm my Beloved's and He is mine;
His banner over me is love.
I'm my Beloved's and He is mine;
His banner over me is love.
His banner over me is love.

Dannah: That was Christy Nockels with her song "His Banner over Me." It's based on a verse from Song of Solomon, a book of the Bible that teaches us about love. That particular verse describes how the love of God protects and comforts someone, like a banner waving overhead reminding us of a protective military force. 

Speaking of Song of Solomon, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is about to dive into it with us as we look at the direction of love. We’ve looked at the definition—God Himself—the demonstration—a decisional sacrifice. Now, the direction of God’s love. And ours! 

Of course, in response to His love for us, we love Him back. So the direction of our love is upward.

The Bible uses the marriage relationship as a picture of the sweet relationship God intends to have with His people. So as we direct our love upward to Him, it can help to envision the sweetest, best marriage you could possibly imagine.

That’s what Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sees when she reads the love song in the Bible, the Song of Solomon. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.

Now, chances are that you’ve heard those verses at one time or another at a wedding. That’s really an appropriate place to use them. But I want to suggest that this description of love speaks more broadly of the nature of genuine love in whatever context, and in particular of Christ’s love for His people, because it’s His love that is the source of our love for Him and our love for others. You can’t have this kind of love in marriage if you don’t have the love of God flowing into your heart filling you and flowing through you to your mate.

Now the question is asked in this paragraph: “Love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave.” Is this speaking of the bride’s love for her beloved? Or is it speaking of his love for his bride? Is it speaking of our love for Christ? Or His for us? I think the best answer is probably, “Yes.” It’s speaking of both. The fact is, according to 1 John 4, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NKJV). We couldn’t love Him if He didn’t love us. But He does love us, and that enables us to love Him.

So we see in this paragraph that true love is powerful; it’s passionate; it perseveres; it’s priceless and precious. I want to just take a little bit of time on each of these phrases and remind us of things we know in our head but we need to be reminded of in our hearts about the love of God—His love for us and how He enables us to love others.

First we read the phrase: “Love is as strong as death.” Think about how strong death is. There is no earthly power is stronger than death. No one on this earth is powerful enough to resist death or to overcome it. So we’re reminded that the love of Christ is as strong as death. His love is so strong that it can break the hardest, most stubborn hearts.

His love is so strong that it can break the hardest, most stubborn hearts.

Not only is His love as strong as death, but His love is even stronger than death. We know that death met its match in the love of Christ. Death could not overcome Him. Because of His great love for mankind, He came to this earth. He chose to die, to lay down His life to rescue His Bride. He stared death in the face. He ran into the jaws of death, and He overcame it. Christ put death to death! Could I hear a hallelujah? Yes, He did. Love is as strong as death. The love of Christ is even stronger than death.

And then, “Jealousy [is] as cruel as the grave.” If you’re using the ESV, it says “jealousy is as fierce as the grave.” That word cruel or fierce means "unyielding, firm." It’s strong. God’s love is a jealous love. He’s a jealous God. When we think of jealousy, we think of that in very human terms, which are generally not pure. But the jealous love of God is an incredibly, intensely perfect, pure love. He loves us with an intensely passionate fierce love that is so passionate it will brook no rivals. That’s how jealous His love is for us.

He loves us so much. He’s so jealous for His glory and for our love that if there are other loves that are competing in our lives, He will do whatever is necessary to protect His glory and have us for Himself. He wants us to be bound to His heart, bound to His arms as we saw. “Set me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm.” He wants us to be bound to Him in that way, and so He has to strip away those things that vie for our attention and for our love—those idols in our hearts. He is a jealous God, and that love is intensely passionate.

It says, “Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.” Now, some of your translationssay there instead of “a most vehement flame,” it says, “the very flame of the Lord.” They’re not clear which translation is best. But if it’s the latter, this is the only reference to the name of God in the whole book of the Song of Solomon—the only explicit reference though you can see His fingerprints everywhere.

But these flames of love or flames of fire—a very vehement flame—the very flame of the Lord. God’s love is a burning hot, consuming, fiery love. Again, it will burn away anything in our lives that could take His place.

David Livingstone was a missionary statesman to Africa in the nineteenth century. He wrote a prayer that I’ve prayed many, many times over the years. He said, “Sever every tie but the tie that binds me to Thy service, and to Thy heart.”

So, “God, break it, burn it, remove it, strip it. Everything that I hold on to, everything that binds me, everything that I love more than I love You, everything that competes for Your place in my life, sever it; every tie but the tie that binds me to Thy service and to Thy heart.”

Is that your prayer? It’s a little scary, isn’t it? But it’s so important to say, “Lord, burn it all away, everything that’s chaff, everything that’s temporal, every love that would rival my love for you. Be a jealous God in my life, so that I may live bound to You.”

Verse 7: “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” We’ve seen that the love of Godis powerful; it’s passionate, and now we see that the love of God perseveres. Many waters cannot quench it. The floods cannot drown it. The fire of God’s love cannot be extinguished or drowned.

You read this concept in Romans chapter 8, the great love passage. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” And then it lists all these things. Can this or this or this? No, the answer is.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, [nothing] shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv. 38–39 NKJV).

That’s how God loves you and me—this permanent, unquenchable, inextinguishable love. That means there is nothing you can do to cause Him to love you less. There’s nothing you can do to cause Him to love you any more. And that is how He wants us to love Him. That’s how He wants to love others through you, with passionate, permanent, persevering love.

There is nothing you can do to cause Him to love you less. There’s nothing you can do to cause Him to love you any more.

That’s how He wants to love your mate. That’s how He wants to love your children through you. That’s how He wants to love the people in your workplace and in your church and those you serve with—the lives around you. He wants to love them through you with that persevering love that cannot be extinguished.

Then we see that the love of God is precious and priceless. “If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.” Genuine love can’t be bought. There’s no amount of money that can purchase it. And don’t we sometimes foolishly try to buy the love of God or try to buy the love of others?

We think, “Boy, if I just had my quiet time more often . . . If I just have a longer quiet time . . . If I just memorize more Scriptures . . . If I just screech less at my kids . . . If I lose more weight . . . If I fast more . . . If I do this . . . If I do that . . .” No. You can’t buy love. It has to be freely given.

That’s why the love of Jesus is so amazing. He has loved us freely, generously, permanently, perseveringly, in a precious and priceless way. That’s the love of God.

One writer put it this way:

Put together all the tenderest love you know, the deepest you have ever felt, and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you, and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity, and you will begin, perhaps, to have some faint glimpse of the love that God has for you.

I have a dear friend, who, when she was a teenager, I think, or a younger woman, her dad left the family, left her mom. It created some serious trust issues in her life—some difficulty really believing that God loved her, difficulty receiving the love of God. As my friend has been married over the years, there have been points where she found it very difficult to receive love from her husband—who has only proven himself to be a very faithful man. There have been fears and doubts and difficulties receiving the love of God and the love of her mate.

We would talk about this over the course of several years. We had multiple conversations about it. Not having lived where she's lived, and not being wired the way she is wired, I sometimes found it difficult to understand. Sometimes you just want to shake somebody and say, "Just believe it! Just get a grip. Get it; God loves you. Your husband loves you." Well, that's not really helpful. I know there are times the Lord and others would want to shake me and tell me to get sometimes that I'm not getting.

She understood it intellectually. She understood it theologically. I find this is true of a lot of women. They know that God loves them, but they don't really know it. They don't feel it. They don't believe it. They don't trust it. That's even hard to admit.

But we would talk about this and pray about it. One of the things on my heart was to just keep getting her to the character of God. Over several years I watched as she really got into the Word, memorizing Scripture, meditating on it, letting the Word just wash her and renew her mind.

I remember so clearly sitting in my living room one day having a chat. She turned to me and just real casually said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to tell you that in the last few months I’ve come to really believe that God really does love me.” I wanted to come out of my seat. Like . . . woo hoo! What a breakthrough. It didn't happen overnight. It probably won't happen with you overnight if that is something you struggle with.

One of my burdens in this whole Song of Solomon series has been for a lot of women like my friend who just struggle, based on whatever you've experienced with the frailties and failures of human love, to really believe that God does love you. I just know for her it was a process of immersion in the Scripture, immersion in the character of God, letting Him change her thinking, strip away the lies, replace them with truth.

If you struggle to know that God really loves you, you know you’ve placed your faith in Christ, you know you’re trusting Him to save you, but it doesn’t connect from your head to your heart. (Now, it's possible that you're not a child of God.) But if you are, but you struggle to receive His love or perhaps then to receive the love of your mate . . .

No matter how many times when he would say, “I love you.” She would think Well, yes, but you are supposed to say that. It just didn’t grip her. I don’t think it grips any of us the way that it should and the way that it could if we would let God continue to wash our hearts with His love. I’m hoping as a result of these weeks that you have come or are coming to experience the amazing love of God—whether you are married or single, young or old, widowed or divorced, kids or not kids—whatever your season of life—I hope that you’re coming to experience the love of God in a fresh way.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, from a series she taught on the Song of Solomon. It’s called “How to Fall and Stay in Love with Jesus.” You’ll find a link to it when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click where you see “How to Find Unfailing Love.”

There’s another way our love should be directed. Not only upward to God, but also outward, to others. That includes people that are on the margins of society.

Dr. Karen Ellis spoke on how we can show love to the ones the Bible refers to as “widows” and “the fatherless”—the ones who are most vulnerable in society. Karen is the director of the Edmiston Center for Christian Endurance Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary. Let’s listen.

Dr. Karen Ellis: As we practice James 1:27, as we visit widows and the fatherless in their distress, as we move from pitying the bereft to empowering them for kingdom service, God breathes life into us! He breathes life into our churches and into our communities and into all who are spiritually bereft!

These are the things these women from the margins—now no longer bereft—teach those of us who live in comfort and privilege. Here are four principles from the margins that I have been blessed to observe.

One: live for today with your eyes fixed on tomorrow. Some aspects of Christianity place a lot of emphasis on the reality of this world, other aspects of Christianity focus on “the sweet by-and-by" and they ignore the “nasty now-and-now” altogether! But those who persevere deal in both—they use their future hope to shape their present reality.

Second: there’s beauty in stealth and in kingdom creativity. The power of powerlessness can change people, families, communities, cities, and even nations from the bottom up and from the margins in!

Third: political power is fleeting. No matter how much political clout you think you’ve assembled, there will always come a day when “a new pharaoh comes to the throne who knows not Joseph.” A Christian is always one cultural wind away from dwelling in the land of Goshen.

Fourth: they have taught me that making a mark in the Lamb’s Book of Life—the book that we will study for eternity—is far greater than any mention in the history books of men that will pass away. And let me tell you, the subject matter between those two different books is completely different!

The heroes are different; the victories are recorded very differently, and the subject matter and the way the story gets told, the bottom is up and the top is bottom. I am persuaded that the future of Christianity in America is on America’s margins. It’s on the world’s margins.

As my dear brother in Fairfield, Alabama, Rev. Alton Hardy, who ministers on the margins just said a few days ago, “The truth is, without affliction and hardship, we would be trivial, superficial, flat-sided beings, people without depth or substance, people with a shallow faith.” The margins prepare us to live with a persecution hermeneutic and a virtue of perseverance. 

History is lo-o-ong. Sometimes it’s so long we get comfortable, sometimes it’s so long we forget who we are, and we forget what we are capable of accomplishing. We forget that God is as large and sovereign as He says He is! Or perhaps we even begin to doubt. Satan has never stopped whispering in our ears, “Did God really say . . .?”

Who are we going to be as our cultural winds become more and more hostile toward those who want to live a biblical life? Who are you going to be? Will we teach our children to see themselves as perpetual victims, be it of persecution or oppression?

Are we training them to rely too heavily on government legislation or to grasp for power to accomplish the kingdom work that the church on the margins does best? Or are we teaching our children to see themselves as called-out, set-apart people on task and moving with purpose through their Father’s world?

The “margins” is our heritage. There’s life on the margins. The power of the kingdom of God is on the margins, because God visits those on the margins! He visits the widow and breathes life into them!

I say let the bereft of the world—including the widow—show us the way. How should we love the widow? To encourage the widow is to love her, to empower the widow is to love her, to sit at the feet of the widow and learn is to love her. 

They will remind us who we are: capable of being powerful, creative, strong, decisive, trusting, teaching, believing, Bible women because His kingdom is not of this world! If that doesn’t make you want to shout for joy in the midst of this broken, cruel, idolatrous, and punishing world, ah, well, then God help us! I can’t help you, if that doesn't make you want to shout!

Everybody stand to your feet and let this good news wash over you! Because this is the good news which we’ve received, in which we stand, and by which we are saved—that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day and that He appeared to the women first . . . because they were looking for it!

Dannah: That was Dr. Karen Ellis there, helping us think about the outward direction of our love. Again, you can listen to the entire message at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and select this episode.

So, yes, we’re seeing a lot of pink and red in the stores right now. That’s fine. But remember that love as God defines it goes so much deeper than simply romantic love. 

• Jesus defines love as laying down your life. 
• He demonstrates that love by doing it Himself, on the cross. 
• And then He asks us, in return, to direct our love both upward, to God, and outward, to everyone around us.

If all of this about God’s love is new to you, head to this website to learn more: ReviveOurHearts.com/GoodNews. You can experience God’s love for yourself! 

If English isn’t your first language, or if you know someone in that category, check out the resources and podcasts available from Revive Our Hearts at this page: ReviveOurHearts.com/languages. So, for example, if Afrikaans is your heart language, or Dutch or Farsi or French, you’ll find Revive Our Hearts content there. And there’s more! And pass the word on!

Would you say the gospel affects your life? Do you share the good news about Jesus with people who don’t have a relationship with Him? We’ll look more closely at how you can “leverage your ordinary moments in life” for the sake of sharing the gospel, next time on this program. 

Thanks so much for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. I hope you’ll join us for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹“His Banner over Me,” Christy Nockels, Be Held: Lullabies for the Beloved, ℗ 2017 Keeper’s Branch Records/The Fuel Music.

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