WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Think of something rock solid, immovable. Use it to help you reflect for a moment on the strength and durability of God’s love for you. The strength of love Today’s reading offers lots of advice: distilled sound bites of the wisdom gained from the experience of a life lived in love. Perhaps the most well-known section comes in 8:6,7, highlighting the sheer strength of love. Looking back over the week’s readings, we have seen how the love of this couple has captivated them, rewarded them, and sustained them (4:9,10). It has taken them through difficult days (ch 5), and held them tightly together. They speak of its strength now as more powerful than death (8:6). Here is a couple devoted and bonded together for life. God’s love for us If we can speak like this about a human marriage, how much more can we speak about the love of God for us! His love can burst into our lives like a flame (v 6b) transforming us; it carries on beyond the grave and into eternity. No ocean, flood or tsunami can sweep away the love God has for us (v 7). To experience the power of love is clearly overwhelmingly wonderful for this couple. Yet verse 6 suggests that this sort of love flourishes only within the context of lifelong commitment. And, while it is freely available, it is not up for sale or barter (v 7). Respond: Read Romans 8:38,39. Try to capture a sense of the height, width and depth of God’s love. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-12-01