Description
FLAVOUR: LOVE LETTERS
God Author of Love
February 2008
Lisa Young
When we understand that God first loved us, that’s when we are able to share His love with others.
Transcript
Intro: I am always amazed I have so much paraphernalia up here that I need a huge platform. But I’m so glad you’re here and it’s February, the month of love. I just don’t really ever think of February without thinking of Valentines. I don’t know what it is, it is just that month is all consuming Valentine’s. We might as well have January, Valentine’s, March and move on with it. I don’t know. And of course the Valentine’s come out in the grocery store the day after Christmas pretty much. So it is with us for a long time. I was interested to find out what the origin of Valentine’s was because I thought that Valentine’s was something that came about because of a saint, a patron saint and he shared love with everyone and that’s why we had Valentine’s Day. But I did a little search according to the very valid and true internet, I’m sure, and it’s true. If we have any scholars who have done their thesis on Valentine’s and want to correct me at the end I’ll be down front. But what I found from my Google search is that Valentine’s began as a pagan holiday. And it was actually not just one day but it was celebrated the entire month and it was chosen February was chosen as the calendar month to celebrate this because it was the mating season for birds. I thought that was interesting. It had to do with mythology but the Romans had a in the 15th and 16th centuries they would have this town drawing, like villages would get together and the women would put their names in a bucket and the men would draw from the bucket a woman and they would be committed to them for one year. I mean, how lame is that? But, I started thinking; there are probably some guys who would still like to do that. One year, commit for just one year. That’s it. I should not be so cruel. I’m sorry all the backstage people back there, the men in the house back there. But it is interesting when we look at Valentine’s because it did get picked up and revamped by the Catholic Church. Because shortly after in the 16th century the Catholic Church decided we have to do something about this confusion between love and lust. And so the Catholic Church came in and did a whole thing through the church spinning and putting out there the fact that it was all about communicating love and we could not trash love because love had come from God. And that it was something to be taken seriously; it was not some mythological thing. Then there was indeed this spin on Valentine’s and the focus began for people to send letters expressing love to one another and to take the lust part out of it. It was a very transitional thing, a transforming thing for Valentine’s Day. And that’s where we get the Valentine’s cards and letters.
Now, how many of you have taken care of your Valentine’s chores? That’s terrible, chores. Treats, your Valentine’s treats, the opportunity that you have to share love with someone. How many of you have already done that? Okay, I have done part of mine. Okay, do you realize that this week the U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that 1 billion Valentine’s cards will be sent worldwide. That’s amazing. That’s a pretty good industry. And 85 percent of those are purchased and sent by women. I tried to do that math, like 15 percent. I guess that means that we take care of extended family and kids and the guys just have us, if they should choose to do that. So that’s how they make up the 15 percent, I don’t know. I have something so special; I have all this stuff up here. I have my treasure chest which has a Valentine that I sent Ed. It’s postmarked and it’s not an antique. It has to be 100 years old to be an antique. Although, the kids were looking at this and they said mom the envelope is yellow kind of like when we were trying to make that old parchment paper. I was like, it’s not parchment. But I have a Valentine that’s dated February 12th, 1979. Well, which says a lot about Ed because I sent this to him and he saved it. See “Valentine I would like to show you what’s in my heart.” It’s a mirror. And I said, “I love you EBY + LML = love. Thank you for being my one and only Valentine. I love you and think of you always, you’re super fantastic.” That was my thing that I used to say to him, you’re super fantastic. In this box, this is like my vault because I have letters that I wrote to Ed and he wrote to me. He and I dated for two years and he moved to Houston. I was in South Carolina and he was in Houston and we didn’t have e mail. LeeBeth was asking me today because we received a save the date for a wedding that’s going to be in June, and she goes Mom, did y’all do save the date? I said no we didn’t have that. She said now you can do it on the web. I said LeeBeth I had never seen a computer in real life when I got married. Things changed. We didn’t have e mail. We didn’t e mail cards and stuff like that. We had to write long letters. And I have this is one that Ed did for me. You see he had to put that artistic little spin in it. And one of the letters he sent me he actually drew the State of Texas and an airplane coming to South Carolina. Is that not sweet? But what we did, we would spray cologne because I wore that’s why you got a scented scripture card when you came in today. It’s just a little reminder of what extra touch you can add to your love letter. But Jovan Musk Oil for men. Does that take you back? Oh, that’s awesome. I might just wrap this up and give it to Ed this year. Okay, and then Charlie. Whoops, wrong way. Charlie.
Somebody told me last night that they wore Charlie because their husband’s name was Charlie, which makes a lot of sense, much more sense than just picking it randomly, I guess. But anyway, I do have a lot of love letters and Valentine’s from over the years but probably the one that stands out the most, and I shared this story a little bit with you at Christmas in our December Flavour when Ed brought me flowers on stage. So if you were here, if not I’m going to tell you the story. I always take care of the Valentine’s for our family and so it’s nothing big. We just do like a little box of candy and maybe some little surprise. EJ might get some little guy thing. One year I bought them pajama pants, like Sweet Tarts and Wal-Mart always has that for like $7.88. Everything at Wal-Mart ends in .88. So you know $6.88, $7.88, $5.88. So I bought them pajama pants. But I was really excited because Ed loves the candy Sugar Babies and I bought him a box of Sugar Babies and I had the yellow pajama pants with Sugar Babies on them all set out because I get up first and had the coffee made and everything is done. I make the eggs, not every year but sometimes I do the eggs in the heart shaped skillet or something like that. That was good year. I’m bragging; that was a good year. So everybody gets up that morning and the kids are getting ready to leave for school and Ed is going to drive them and I’m like, my spot is empty. There’s not a Valentine. I said Ed, look at all this. And I’m sure it was a hormonal moment for me, I don’t know. But I said look at this. What is wrong with this picture? And he just said what do you mean? I said, there’s no Valentine. He said Lisa, its 7:15. The day is young. There’s always tonight. And I said, okay. Well you just go to Target with all those other looser guys who haven’t bought their girlfriends cards and pick out from all the picked over cards and get one that is just left over. And he was just looking at me like back up because the fangs are coming out. I felt bad for talking like that because the day was young. I had done everything I thought just right and just a little thought would have been nice. Anyway, that day at noon Ed and I were scheduled to meet and work out together. And so, when I got to the gym, it is a gym in Grapevine, a small gym, when I walked in it was just like this little rumble. Several of the women that were working out just looked and they had a smile on their face and my first thought was, what’s wrong with me? What have I done wrong? And then I see this friend of ours who worked out with us and he had this giant poster in his hand and he’s walking through the gym like this. And I’m like what is that? And he goes, this is from Ed. And Ed is there working out but he is just staying in the background because I guess there was this timing thing that he was working out. It says Happy Valentine’s Day. So Ed had gone to the office and instead of going to Target to pick over cards Lara, come up here. We have to reveal this just right. He decided to have his picture made and this is it.
Now, you notice that he’s reading the book that he and I wrote on marriage, For Keeps, which now is in another printing so it’s Creative Marriage. And he had written my name on his arm. And you know what? I obviously was very amused but there was something inside of me that said, how did he do that? He topped me once again. I could not be mad at him. And it made me mad that I could not be mad. Have you ever like that? I’m just mad that I can’t be mad because he really came through. And I have saved it and just keep hold of these things because they’re so special. And sometimes if you’re not feeling a little loved you might have to pull that out or pull out that love letter, take a whiff of that Charlie perfume or Jovan Musk Oil and remind yourself that you’re loved.
Because, invariably you and I put expectations on other people to give us the kind of love that we need. And they disappoint us. I don’t care whether it’s a father, mother, a child, whether it’s your spouse, whether it’s a teacher but we put expectations on people that they cannot fulfill. What’s the problem? We’re putting these expectations on someone when we’re trying to get that perfect love that only God can give us. And as women it is my desire and the Flavour team, our desire, that more than anything that we as a body of women coming together will understand truly how much God loves us and not only how much He loves us but the content of that love; the meaning of that love; what it does for us. It is indeed something that He has a given us, such a great gift and yet too often we forget how much we’re loved. Now psychologists will tell you and me all the differences between men and women and needs that a man has and needs that a woman has. And they vary tremendously. But the common need that we have is that need to be loved, just to be loved, to feel loved. And I don’t know where you have come from today; I don’t know what situation you’re dealing with; I don’t know all the stories in this room but I do know this: One of the greatest struggles that women have is feeling loved. And maybe it’s because we do look in all the wrong places as Charlie Daniels once sang, “Looking for love in all the wrong places,” maybe that’s what we’re guilty of. But today I want to remind you as I remind myself that we have to look to our Heavenly Father because He has a gift so great for us. In fact, He’s actually written a love letter to you and to me.
In the upcoming months of Flavour this spring we’re going to be talking about the love letters because this book is a love letter to me. This Bible is filled with the love that God has for you and me. And I think about how often maybe each you have a Bible or you were given one as a child and it might have a place on a coffee table or a side table or maybe even by your bed but how often it is not opened. And we forget to read.
And as we’re feeling unloved and unlovable and looking to all these other sources for love we forget that this is right beside us and available so that we can know the depth of God’s love for us. So I hope that if you do have a Bible or if you have, you might have to dust it off or if you don’t have a Bible even, we’ll provide one for you. I want you to know that this is the source, this is the book that can explain to you the love, the greatest gift of all which is the love of God. And so over the next couple of months we are going to be talking about that and understanding how this book can make a difference in our lives. But God did give us His love letters. And I wanted to share with you a couple of scripture verses about what it means to understand God’s love.
The first thing I want you to know about God’s love letters, from cover to cover God has something special to say for you. The first thing is that God’s love is available for everyone. No one is excluded from God’s love. I think that is the most amazing thing because in the world we live in we can categorize and put people in groups according to their race, according to their socioeconomic level, all these different things, whether they’re blonde, brunette, from this part of the world, that part of the world but God brings it all together in this book and says, I love all of you. He loved the entire world. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever” anybody, it is available to everyone “whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.” So God’s love is available for everyone.
Also, God’s love is abundant. Ephesians 3:17 19 says this, and I want you to look carefully at these words because it is a lot of stuff that doesn’t sound very familiar but it is very powerful. “And I pray for you being rooted and established in love” in other words He is talking to those people who have given their live to Christ, who have received the great gift that God did on Calvary. “I pray for you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints, with all those who have gone before us who have followed Christ to grasp how wide” I love this “how long, how high and how deep is the love of Christ. It is abundant. It covers everything. There is no time in your life where you are not in reach of God’s love. It is there, available, it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t fall short, it is deep, it is wide, it is high, and it is abundant for you and for me.
And God’s love is dependable, it’s dependable. Now, I guess this one touches us the most because it seems to me that this is the greatest symptom that we realize when we put our focus on someone else’s love, on another human being’s love, when we try to put those God sized expectations on someone else because it is failing. But God’s love never fails. It is dependable. Romans 8:35 and 37 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of God?” Who? “Who can cause you to be separate from this love? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Any of those things? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Not one thing can separate us from God’s love. Not one thing will cause His love to fail us. Not one thing. So no matter where you’ve come from today, no matter what you’re struggling with whether it’s an illness, whether it’s a spouse that has disappointed you, whether it’s a struggle with a child, whether it’s a career move, something that’s going wrong with your live, there is nothing perhaps you might be thinking well I am unlovely. You don’t know where I have been. God’s love letter said there’s nothing that you have done that can separate you from His love or me from my love.
It also says that His love is perfect, God’s love is perfect. And I love this verse, 1 John 3:1, it says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God.” There’s nothing like the love of a parent, that unconditional love. My children can do a lot of things wrong. They do a lot of things good, too, but they can do a lot of things wrong. I can quickly tell you those things but none of the things that they do ever causes me not to love them. I don’t like what they do; I’m disappointed at times with what they do; but I love them. But you know what, my love is imperfect. As a mom I’m going to fail my kids because I’m just an imperfect person. God’s love as our Heavenly Father is perfect, perfect timing, perfect content, perfect in every way, shape and form. I’ve been a Christian since I was nine years old and that simply means that when I was 9 I bowed my knees and said God, I realize that I’m separate from You and I want You to be in my life and I invited Him to come in. Well you can do the math, I’m 47, so from 47 to 9. I’m not going to do that math, it’s too much pressure on stage. But in that length of time God’s love has never failed me, never failed me. And I know other people in this room who could stand up and say His love has never failed me. There are times when I have failed Him but His love has never failed me. It is perfect.
What would it be like to get the perfect Valentine’s? Is there such a thing? Of all those billion of cards that are going to be sent, is there one that’s the perfect Valentine? Is it a life-sized poster of someone? No. Just in case you wondered, no. Is there such a thing as a perfect Valentine? I, today, am going to give you the perfect Valentine. Look under your chair and you’re going to find a clipboard underneath your seat and there’s a red pen and you’re going to help me give you the perfect Valentine. So for some of you, you may have been in school just a short time ago. For others, like me, it’s been a long, long time but this is what we call dictation.
I was a schoolteacher so there is something inside of me that is really enjoying this moment right now. Friday’s were spelling test days and we always had a sentence for dictation. But we’re going to write the perfect Valentine. Is there anyone who did not get one? Anybody who doesn’t have a clipboard? Okay. Now, I might interject some things but I want you to write what I say and I’ll tell you not to write if I’m saying something outside of the content of what I want you to write. Here we go, you ready? Everybody have a pen? Everybody have a red pen? You need a red pen. Okay. “Dear beloved” and it’s on the side screens but I’m going to read it out to you. “Dear beloved” so you see what’s going to be written but I want to explain to you what beloved means. Do you need a pen? Her pen is not working. Anybody else’s pen not working? Oh, me. Just spit on it. Do that lady like thing. Raise your hand if you don’t have a pen that is writing. If you scribble it will work, I hear. Spit and scribble. But what beloved means is the one who is loved, and that’s you. “Dear beloved, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with loving kindness.” And this is from Jeremiah 31:3. “You can be honest with Me because I know you. I know when you sit and when you rise. I know every thought you have. I see when you come and when you go. I am familiar with all your ways.” And that’s Psalm 139:1 3. Are we tracking? You don’t have to write that part. Are y’all up? Okay, because we’re going to go to the next part. “You can trust Me” okay, no? That’s good. I need feedback. Can you put that slide back, Curtis? Thank you. I mean if you’re writing the perfect Valentine’s you want to have good handwriting so I know why you’re trying. Look at me when you’re done so I know that you’re pretty much ready to move on. Okay, ready? “You can trust Me because I have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. When you call upon Me and pray to Me I will listen to you.” Jeremiah 29:11 12. Okay, now this is a big one right here. Are you ready? “Don’t question the way I made you because I made you just like I want you to be. You have a unique design, specific gifts” and this is what Flavour is all about right here “an important purpose.” I hope you have room for this last little bit. We’re not moving yet, don’t worry. This is the last verse. Now are you ready? No. I think we have some perfectionists in the house. For time’s sake we’re going to go on. “Who shall separate you from My love?” We’ll put the slides back up in a little bit. “Who shall separate you from My love? Will trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” You can write this in all caps if you want. “No. Nothing will separate us.” No. “In all these things you are more than conquerors through Me because I love you.” Now, as you continue to write and you can sign it forever yours and forever mine, Heavenly Father. Now I hope you realize that as you finish this out that I have just picked out, I think its five verses out of this entire book.
We could have written this many pages because that’s how applicable God’s love letter is to you and me. And it’s written for our growth. It is written so that we can understand the love because when we understand the love just like you see on the verse on the bottom of your card, when we understand that God has first loved us that’s when we can share love with other people. And this is the secret. Once we have a relationship with Jesus Christ it is all about reading and rereading His love letter to us. So over the next couple of months our desire, our goal as a team, as a group of women, is to fall in love with this love letter, to look to it as our greatest source of strength, our greatest source of those feelings of love and in understanding that when we read this we’re going to know God more. So that’s what the next couple Flavour’s are going to be about. But this, when you get done, you can put it in your envelope and I want you to write your address on the envelope. And we’re going to take these up, we’re going to pass an offering bag. Nobody is going to read it, if you put something else on there for yourself. And it is going to be mailed to you so that you get the perfect Valentine’s on February 14th or thereabouts depending on the U.S. mail. My father worked 35 years for the Post Office so I’m counting on them. So put your address and we’ll take care of the rest. There is no excuse for anybody who is in this room to feel unlovely or unlovable because God loves you. And He’s told us that in His book. Yanci is going to come and do a song. I’m going to have a word of prayer and then she’s going to come and do a song and as she sings the offering bag is going to be passed and if you will just drop your cards in we’ll take those up and we’ll get them in the mail to you this week. So let’s pray together.
Father, I thank You that You are the Author of love but you did not keep it to Yourself. You gave it to us through Your Son Jesus Christ and that is the greatest, most sacrificial gift that anyone can ever receive. And Father, I pray that as women in this place, that we will put our attention and our focus on You and receive that love so that we’re not disappointed by the love of others because You fill in every gap, You take up any slack that we feel. And I pray, Father, right now that in this room You know the hurts and the needs, You know the positions, the places that people have been but that You would just pour that love on them right now as You have me. And God I thank You for the victory that we feel in this love that we are not defeated, we are victorious because of this love that You have so freely and lavishly placed upon us. Thank You for calling us Your children. We voice this prayer in the precious and holy name, the everlasting name of Jesus. Amen.