Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love

For our Jesse Tree, we’re reading the Whole Story a la The Jesus Storybook Bible. My friend Kristen put this reading plan together to coincide with that particular book.

But I get stuck. Right at the beginning. I want to take a big long drink of water. Living water.

Sigh. . . .

The next part of the Story is that Satan told Eve a terrible lie. That God didn’t really love her. That was the lie. The lie that broke the world. The lie didn’t change God’s love, but our believing it and acting on it changed everything else.

We were driving home from church yesterday after a longer-than-usual service. The boys are now enjoying following along in the hymn book, and they scramble to see the instrumentalists and candle-lighting. They’ve got a small repertoire of quiet games to play and pictures to draw. But it’s still hard to learn that sitting-still skill.

Grant and I empathized with them, remembering our younger (and frankly, older) days. I finally blurted out, “When Daddy and I were little, we went to church THREE times a week!” Grant said, “And sometimes we went every night of the week!!! UGH!! . . . You see, that world taught us that God loved us more if we went to church more. But that’s silly! God can’t love us anymore than He already does.”

And I remembered The Jesus Storybook Bible. “That’s that terrible lie that we read about last night. Just like Satan told Eve. That God doesn’t love us. . . . that’s why we had to leave because they weren’t telling us the Truth about God.”

I know that lie all too well. I know why Eve believed it. And I hear it still whispered in triggers and flashbacks, in fatigue and doubt. If you want to hear it for yourself, you can go here. Just know that it’s a lie.

So many lies. They are told so often that we think they are true, and we begin to repeat them ourselves. So here. Fill up your gut with the Truth through and through:

The Truth is that Jesus wins, and He loves you!