God’s Love Is So Much Bigger

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be difficult times of year for many people. They may have lost a parent, are separated from them or never knew them to begin with. In our youth group, we have teenagers who are in foster care, don’t know who one of their parents is, or have both parents but have incredibly difficult and dramatic relationships with them.

That’s why it was so important for us to share a lesson about God’s love on Mother’s Day Sunday. I struggled with how to present Scripture about how wonderful mothers can be with kids who have broken relationships with theirs. So we started with mothers and then took it one step further.

If you hold your balled up fist to your chest, that’s about how big your heart is. For all the emotion and pain it puts us through, you’d think it would be much bigger, but it’s really just a small part of your anatomy. Now think about the amount of love you have stored up in your heart, and how much love you share with others - I’m guessing it’s a lot! We love to be loved and we love loving other people. And that’s lovely.

As we move on to describe a mother’s love, I wish I could make a broad, sweeping generalization and say that her love is even bigger than our own. This is true in many cases, but again, we all know people who have mothers who are the exception to this rule. This breaks my heart, and I continue to pray daily for these relationships in our teenagers’ lives especially.

But even looking at a loving, godly mother’s love, it’s still not perfect. As long as we are on this earth, we remain human and flawed, making mistakes and asking forgiveness every single day. The love they show, though, is still not the biggest love in our lives.

In John 9:5, Jesus said As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Believers then become the reflection of that love in a lost and dying world. The darkness may not always comprehend it, but it’s there, lighting up all the corners of sin. 

When the light of Jesus shines on a believer’s heart, the shadow it casts is even bigger! We love, mothers love more and God loves exponentially beyond that. And He can use that light and love through us to do more than we could ever imagine doing on our own. What a beautiful picture of what can happen when there is more of God’s love in the world. I pray that we’ll examine our hearts today and see if we’re allowing the light of the Lord to shine through us and around us to bring Him all the honor and glory He deserves.

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