You are loved! Jesus loves you! The three most beautiful words. We say them but do we really believe them? God’s love for us, demonstrated through His son Jesus, is the best valentine. It is forever. It is for everyone! Not just for the beautiful, the young, or the perfect but for everyone! There is nothing to do, more importantly, that we can do to earn this great gift, this forever valentine.
Sometimes, I forget this. I think I must do something, or be something, but God says no. He says I love you just the way you are. Scripture says “We love because He first loved us.” I love Him because He first loved me. He first loved you! What a gift! God’s gifts of love are expressed in many ways. First, in the love of Jesus. Each day brings new opportunities to remember and experience His love.
For many years I had a daily visual of God’s love. It was the oak tree in our front yard. Every morning as I enjoyed my quiet time with the Lord I looked out at my tree. It was tall, strong, and shaded our porch and home. I loved my tree and what is provided.
Over the years, friends began telling me the main branch, the source of the shade, was dead and needed to be removed. I couldn’t let it go. One day, a friend came by and announced he was cutting off the branch. To my surprise, the tree began to thrive. It looked different, but it had a new beauty and was the beginning of many unique gifts of love, faith, trust, and provision which continue today.
Letting Go Reveals the God’s Gift
There was the provision of years of firewood. But there has been a far more important gift. When the branch came down, it revealed a surprise. Something I would have missed if the branch had remained. A beautiful heart was etched in the trunk where the branch had been. It was a hidden gift. Over the next 20 years, I enjoyed watching the birds fly in and out of the heart as they sang their morning songs. The heart served as a sweet reminder from the Lord that when I cling too tightly to loved ones, possessions, the past, etc., I may be missing a God gift.
In John 15:2, Jesus said: “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so it may bear more fruit.” How often I have clung to my old dead branches. I often resist when I feel the presence of the Lord’s pruning shears. I want to hold on to my old branches. I am comfortable with them. They provide emotional shade for me.
However, this simple, hidden treasure, this valentine on my tree, brought opportunities to share with clients and friends the gift of faith that grew from my tree. When they asked, “Did you know there is a heart on your tree? Wow, there is a heart on your tree!” I was able to share how the Lord stretched my faith as I began to “let go.” By letting go of people and things that are precious to me, I have experienced the joy of God’s provision in my life and in those I love.
My children have matured in deeper ways spiritually as I have ceased holding them too tightly. Most recently, my heart tree helped me let go of a ministry I loved when it became apparent my husband wanted to change churches. He didn’t ask me to leave, but I knew he was unhappy. I loved our church, the people, and the ministry I was involved with. I didn’t want to let go. Privately, I cried and prayed.
As I sat in my prayer chair looking out the window at my heart tree, I asked myself, “Was I willing to put what I had learned to the test? Was I willing to let go and have faith that God had something new for me?” After much struggle, I asked my husband to choose a new church. I told him “As long as they love the Lord, I’ll be Ok.”
Opening Our Hearts and Walking in Faith
Many new gifts were waiting to be revealed. My husband was happier, more relaxed, and grew spiritually, which was a great joy for me. Since I was missing the teaching from my former church, I felt led to reach out to friends and clients from various denominations to join me on a spiritual journey using only the word of God. This has been enormously rewarding. My walk with the Lord has deepened in surprising ways.
At our current church, I began attending “Sisters of the Heart,” a women’s fellowship group. This was a new experience in faith for me. After a spiritual topic is presented, each of us finds a quiet spot to meditate, pray and journal.
Later, there is a time of sharing what the Lord revealed to our hearts. This meditative, thoughtful fellowship resulted in fresh growth and freedom in my faith walk with the Lord. It has birthed a more profound peace and trust. I would have missed this sweet blessing of new sisters in the Lord if I had not been willing to let go of our previous church.
My tree is gone now, the victim of drought. One morning, I looked out to my heart tree and realized something was terribly wrong. It had died. Once again, I was crying “no, no, not my tree.” It had been a symbol of hidden gifts. Always there, faithfully every morning, reminding me to be open to new things and be willing to let go. It couldn’t be dead. But it was. Now I had to be willing to let go of the very symbol that had taught me to let go.
The morning the tree came down, my friend, Ann, brought me the book “The Giving Tree.” I read it through my tears. Just as the “Giving Tree” found a new purpose, my tree did as well. The Lord provided an excellent craftsman who saved the heart and made a beautiful bench for me.
My tree has been repurposed! My heart tree is now my heart bench. It serves as a reminder that as I walk in faith, God always has a purpose; there is another valentine from God just around the corner. Now as I prepare for retirement, I know God will repurpose my life just as He did my tree.
What joy when we see the heart of God in the daily gifts, the valentines He bestows on us. Sometimes they are apparent, an answered prayer or glorious sunset. Other times they are subtle as in the smile of a stranger or a heart etched on a beloved oak tree.
Blessings as you discover God’s daily valentines of love,
Look for God’s valentines to you. They are everywhere waiting for you to receive them.
Personal Parables is the blog of Dyann Shepard. Get Dyann’s complementary study in Proverbs and prayer guide, What to Do When You Don’t Feel Good Enough. If you need encouragement to remember the truth about yourself in times of doubt and anxiety, this free 5-day study is for you. Follow Dyann and Personal Parables on Instagram and Facebook. Dyann is available for speaking, guest blogging, and article writing.
Scripture for Meditation
For a deeper study on the post, “The Lover of My Soul- My Forever Valentine” consider these passages that follow the same theme.
Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV)
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
Zephaniah 3:17 (NASB)
“The LORD your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”
Ephesians 3:14-19 (NASB)
“For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
1 John 4:19 (NASB)
“We love because He first loved us.”
Songs for the Lover of My Soul
Music often brings home the message of love in a unique way. Here are some songs to complement my post, “The Lover of My Soul- My Forever Valentine.”
