Love Will Keep Me

Excerpt from my Random Thoughts Journal from July 18, 2005

I was reading Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott. It’s a book about writing and it’s amusing as well as instructive. It inspired me to want to write something– just anything.  So here goes.

I was thinking about my relationship with Yahweh. Having been raised from an Arminianistic viewpoint, I have had a very insecure view of my salvation most of my life. I now find it difficult to understand how He called me before the foundations of the world to be adopted as His child and yet I am supposed to endlessly wonder about my eternal salvation and ‘work’ for it by living ‘just right’. I know from my own life experiences that people rarely abandon their own. And even when they do, Yahweh says He will take them up. He is endlessly faithful. He did and will do whatever it takes to save His own. If that’s true, barring total infidelity on my part, shouldn’t I feel eternally secure? How could the One who says, "Forsake not your friend," forsake me? Would Yahweh ask more of a mere human than He would do Himself? How could the One who loves me with an ‘everlasting love’ stop loving me? How could the One who ‘remains faithful’ abandon me? He knew me completely before He loved me and called me and chose me to be an ‘eternal’ heir of salvation. And, since He knew me, I can trust Him to complete the work He began in me. Why start something He wasn’t going to finish? Jesus is the ‘author and the finisher’ of my faith. 

I know the kind of friend I am. I keep loving, supporting, and wanting the best for my friends no matter what they’ve done and even when I don’t see or feel that kind of support or commitment from them. I know I’m that way because of the instructions in God’s word, and because of His love and commitment to me. Surely He won’t abandon me when I’m trusting Him and counting on His endless, unmerited favor.

This thinking doesn’t make me want to be careless of my relationship with Him and it does give me deep peace. "When I was sinking deep in sin...LOVE lifted me!" And LOVE will keep me!

Thank You Jesus!