AGAPE

 God is love (Agape) and by this we mean God's love is unconditional. But then what is Love? It is to be essentially and unconditionally good.

But it is not sufficient to know that God is good, rather the more important truth is that God is good to you. GOD LOVES YOU.

 *Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals. How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! [Psalms 36:5-7]* 

 *For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [John 3:16-17]* 

 *The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.[Jeremiah 31:3]*

2 *God's Love gives choices*

The most voiced question to God loving us is why are there still bad occurrences in the world?

The answer is love give choices. While God wants the best for us, he still allows man to make a choice to follow him or not. Our world is thus the cumulation of the choices that people have made.

Even today, God is still beckoning on the world to accept his love but he will not force himself or his way on us. We have to choose to obey him.

 *Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.[Deuteronomy 30:15-16]* 

 *We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.[2Corinthians 5:20]* 

 *But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served... But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."[Joshua 24:15]* 

On love giving choices, every parent knows that furniture, electricity, cooking utensils are all potentially harmful things to your child but when your child reaches a certain age, you stop protecting your child from them but rather teach the child to manage them.

While you hope that your child never jumps from the chair (they do behind you anyway), your love will move you to tend to their sprains if they get injured. Locking your child in a room permanently and removing all potentially harmful things will not be called love but slavery.

Yet some expect that from God. He should take away all potential pains (even though they are designed for our good) and God has given us a manual and His Spirit to teach and guide us.

*Choice is a necessary feature of love* 

3 *God's love is just*

Love is often times not associated with justice, it (love) is seen as being sentimental, but not so with God's love. It is established in righteousness and justice.

People sometimes measure God's justice in time (months and years). If God truly is just,

he should have done this or that for you by now, they say. How then do we describe Joseph who was sold to slavery at 17 and for 13 years he seemed to be under the wrath of God (slavery to prison) .Yet the love and justice of God was revealed when he was 30 years old and he lived till 110 years.

Beloved, never doubt God's love base on your temporary circumstances, his love is just.

 *For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them. [Isaiah 61:8]*

*I will sing of your love and justice, Lord. I will praise you with songs. [Psalms 101:1]* 

 *The King is mighty, he loves justice— you have established equity; in Jacob you have done what is just and right. [Psalms 99:4]* 

 *The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love[Psalms 33:5]*

4 *God is thoughtful of you*

You are not just one of seven billion people on earth, you are special to God and He is mindful of you.

Men might tell you that you are alone and not in God's agenda or thoughts but it is not true.

God is invested and interested in you and yours continually, He made you wonderfully and has you always in his mind.

 *I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well... [Psalms 139:14]* 

 *all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!...[Psalms 139:16-17]*

 

 *When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? [Psalms 8:3-4* ]

 *For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. [Jeremiah 29:11-12]* 

 *Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. [Luke 12:6]*

5 *God's love for you is patient and unmovable*

God understands your frame and he is patient towards you. He is not looking for your faults to punish you. Perhaps the best description of God's Love is seen in Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. Despite the boy's misdeeds, the father (God) ran towards him while he was yet afar off to welcome him back.

Your mistakes can't scare God's love away, He loves you unrepentantly.

 *For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For  he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.[Psalms 103:11-14]* 

 *The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. [2Peter 3:9]* 

 *And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.[Romans 8:38]* 

 *So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him."[Luke 15:20]*

6 *God's love instructs and corrects*

We are all being perfected and thus in need of instruction and correction. The love of God corrects us and that is not judgment. Never get too big for God's correction.

God also does not correct with sickness or disaster, No he does not! 

He corrects with his word because he loves you. Sicknesses/ accidents are consequences of refusing God's corrections.

For instance, a parent tells a child to stop jumping from a chair but the child persists and sprains an ankle.

Can we then say the injury was the parent's means of correction? Of course not.

God is sending his word of correction to you through your meditations in scriptures, the Holy Spirit, your pastors and even your friends; Beloved, listen to them and repent

 *My child, don't reject the Lord's discipline, and don't be upset when he corrects you. For the Lord corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.[Proverbs 3:11-12]*

 *I correct and discipline everyone I love. So be diligent and turn from your indifference. [Revelation 3:19]* 

 *To learn, you must love discipline; it is stupid to hate correction. [Proverbs 12:1]* 

7 *God's love gives*

It is popularly said that the proof of love is giving. You give to whom you love and God showed his love by giving the greatest gift, his son to die for man and save you.

He has also given you his Spirit as proof of his love for you. God loves you unconditionally and will not withhold any good thing from you. He loves you in particular.

 *What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else? [Romans 8:31-32]* 

 *For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. [Psalms 84:11]* 

 *Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. [James 1:17]*