Prove Your Love

Tough times in life. They come and they go. But when they are here, they can be downright excruciating. It can feel like life will never resume a normal daily pace.

During one of my recent “tough seasons” I was having to have some real “nitty gritty” talks with my Lord. Over the course of days and actually a few weeks, he brought many verses to me. Many of them were reassuring verses of how He would fight for me. Many were about trust. And I needed those verses! Oh, how I needed them.

During a “low point” one night I finally just out and out told God that I was frustrated and that I didn’t understand why He so clearly was withholding something from me. I basically (not in so many words) through my prayers, pleas, whines, and cries – was begging for him to prove His love to me.

As if He hasn’t done that so many times already.

As little as I liked the answer, a whisper came to my heart – “What if God is waiting for YOU to prove YOUR love to Him?”

You see – it’s so easy to love God when things are going well. We can praise Him and speak of Him glowingly. We can teach our children how to follow Him. But when the darkness comes at us, that’s when the real test of our love comes in. And God has nothing to prove to us. He’s God.  But what does our trial show of our love for Him? Do we bail quickly? Do we hide out? Do we curse the one we say we love? Do we try to handle things on our own terms? Or do we get on our knees, pray, and offer up our lives to Him? That’s tough to do.

Most of the time, I don’t think God is even asking us to give up things for Him. I think He just wants us to consider the cost. There’s a lot we can learn in merely the thought or mention of certain costs and losses in our lives. There’s a lot we feel in the temporary losses of things in our lives.

I remember in the movie, “Facing the Giants” the football coach’s wife wanted a baby badly. She’d had so many disappointments in this area and finally thought she might be pregnant only to be told that she was again – wrong. Deeply crushed she went out to her car, stifled her tears and looked up into the sky where she told God, “I will STILL love you!”

I think that’s what God wants from me. He wants to hear me say that I will still love Him when things go unfairly in my life. He wants me to stay dedicated to Him even when I don’t understand the “why’s.” He wants me to prove my love just as Job proved His love despite losing almost everything he had in the Bible.

Will I be worthy when the challenging times come?

Will you?

All I’ve ever wanted is God’s love and favor in my life. And I know that’s all He wants from me as well.