Unrelenting Love

Serving at a PRC has had an incredible impact on me. Initially, I thought I would volunteer and allow God to use me to be a blessing and an instrument of His unrelenting love to women in need. I wanted to learn to love women who's lives weren't neat and pretty. I wanted to learn to love women who were as Gomer in the book of Hosea. I wanted to cast off all judgement and in this kind of unrelenting love, reach out to them in the Spirit of Christ.

While this has been the case by the grace of God working in my life, something else has occured. I have become the recipient of His unrelenting love. The word unrelent means to be determined and unyielding. It means not weakening or easing up or diminishing in strength. Synonyms include insistent, pounding, indefatigable, and inexorable. Indefatigable! That means God never tires to love me. Inexorable! That means His love for me is unstoppable or adamant!

Why would God illuminate my soul to understand in a deeper way His love for me when I am thinking it's not about me...it's about God loving these women through me. Who knew? Of course God would take this course of action. Of course He would reveal His unrelenting love to me. Why? First of all, because the very nature of my heart is just like the women who come into the center. And even though I am indeed a new creature in Christ, the fleshly nature in my heart has not been totally sanctified. God's love for me, the Christian who is working out her salvation and not yet sanctified is indeed unrelenting.

When I see things in my heart that aren't neat and pretty, it affords an opportunity to ask the question, "Wow, what's that all about? You are a Christian, why do you see that impatience, that anxiety, that apathy, or unbelief, etc. in your heart?" And then, you experience that unrelenting love of God for you in that condition! He does not give up or cave in or change His mind or lesson His affection because I am not yet fully sanctified. Rather, He reveals it all the more. Romans 5:8 says, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." And thus it is this way all through our Christian pilgrimage. Before we began our journey, He loves. At the beginning of our journey, He loves. In the middle of our journey He loves. And, at the very end of our journey, He loves. Like waves His love comes and washes over our soul. As waves, it intesifies as the journey continues. And we come to that place where we are able to comprehend the very breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge and brings us to a place of the filling up to all the fulness of God! This is the prayer found in Ephesians chapter 3. This filling of unrelenting love experienced and known by one can have a powerful overflow to others. This is how we learn to love others. This is how I am learning to love the woman who comes to the center, who has multiple sleeping partners, who has had several abortions, who carries sexual disease, who doesn't work, who drinks and does drugs, and is extremely self-centered. This is how I love her. God's waves of unrelenting love crashing over my unsanctified soul never to become less intense because I am still a work in progress. And this is how I love my God. "I love Him, because He first loved me," I John 4:19.

The words of the following song are now my heart's own melody:

You won't relent until you have it all, My heart is Yours
You won't relent until you have it all, My heart is Yours
I'll set You as a seal upon my heart, as a seal upon my arm
For there is love as strong as death, jealousy demanding as the grave
And many waters cannot quench this love
Come be the fire inside of me, Come be the flame upon my heart
Come be the fire inside of me, until You and I are one

Then I will truly love like Jesus loved.