Thanks

Bernice Franklin

UGG Boots

Remain encouraged.

Your struggles with sin is EXACTLY what makes you worthy of his love. It’s like any marriage- the courtship, romance, poetry and ditties, is hardly the substance that will sustain your matrimonial estate, but rather, the struggle, the endurance under the trial and difficulty of the relarionship, the strength that keeps you going even when you can’t, and the will and unbreakable determination to rise after every fall…that’s your Act and Gesture of Love back to him.

Obviously at some point, you must begin to progress after the Fall, but even then, it will still take his grace to see you beyond (for my grace is made perfect in weakness ). The struggle is his delight; the wretchedness you feel after the fall is what makes you worhty, and your desire to learn how to love him is why he will teach you and help you grow into that Flower he intended.

Remain a Soldier of Love.

Luke 15:11-32 – The story of the Prodigal Son, also known as the Parable of the Lost Son, follows the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. Jesus is responding to the Pharisees’ complaint: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Jesus tells the story of a man who has two sons. The younger son asks his father to give him his portion of the family estate as an early inheritance. Once received, the son promptly sets off on a long journey to a distant land and begins to waste his fortune on wild living. When the money runs out, a severe famine hits the country and the son finds himself in dire circumstances. He takes a job feeding pigs. He is so destitute that he even longs to eat the food assigned to the pigs.

The young man finally comes to his senses, remembering his father. In humility, he recognizes his foolishness, decides to return to his father and ask for forgiveness and mercy. The father, who had been watching and waiting, receives his son back with open arms of compassion. He is overjoyed by the return of his lost son! Immediately the father turns to his servants and asks them to prepare a giant feast in celebration.

In the end I s’pose it is true what they say, “It is better to have loved and lost than never at all.” Learn from the love of God and his Son, our Lord and Messiah, Jesus Christ.

We are so focused and so busied with our desire to be loved, looking in the faces that pass us by for a hint of that affection; we search in hallways, malls, cafes, church, and continue to ask, “When?” However, may be the substance of true love is not found in its receipt, but in its benevolence. After all, does the Scripture not say, “Give, and it shall be given unto you”?

So as we look towards this Valentine’s Day, whether you are happily married, jadedly married, coupled, or single, forlorn and lonely, don’t mourn the love that isn’t returned; instead celebrate the love you have had, the promise that keeps you up late at night, and what is more, fill someone else’s life with the overwhelming weight of YOUR love. Remember, for every Mary Magdalene, Stephen and Paul, there was an adulterous woman, Ruth and John, “the one that Jesus loved.” For every heart that longs and yearns for true love, there’s at least a thousand who would settle for the mere appearance of love.

Fortunately God has set the bar so high; unfortunately the Lord has set the bar too high. There isn’t a woman or man that could ever measure up or embody these qualities in the perfection of the Trion. Consequently, as you watch this world, frenzied and frantic for one day, as boys, girls, men and women, dance to this commercialized pseudo lyric of love, and your lips begin quivering and your mind begins whispering, “Why can’t I find love?” Congratulations; it’s probably the closest you’ll ever come to being like God.

In His Service.