It's Me Lord

The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

Jeremiah 31:3

Apart from my entire life changing drastically after the sudden loss of my husband, it signaled the beginning of questions about my relationship with God and most importantly His love for me. Many times in the early days and weeks i heard myself telling God 'it's me Lord,Halima remember the one you love so much, the same Halima and Tunbosun that you engraved in the palm of your hands'. I would go on trying to remind God that He loved me (as if He had forgotten). I believed He loved my family and i too much to allow us suffer in anyway. How could a God who said he loved me so much take my husband so early. Somehow the tragedy of my husband's sudden death and a loving God didn't mix. We loved God and served Him and I felt His part of the deal was to keep us safe and bless us that included the blessing of long life. So why did He deny my husband the privilege of living long....and then my thoughts would inadvertently return to 'it's me Lord' you love, me remember, such thoughts constantly reverberated in my mind. 

My Provincial  Pastor was sitting with me one of the days and I blurted out 'maybe it's because I didn't pray enough' I had been whipping my self up trying to figure out why God took my husband. The many people that came and said things like 'agh the devil did it, didn't you get a hunch in your Spirit, God must have spoken to  but....., you have to be prayerful' etc did not help matters (amazing what people say to you when you loose a loved one) People haven't changed much since the days of Job and his friends who kept telling him he must have sinned or failed in some way or the other and was receiving the punishment he deserved from the righteous God. I remember telling God at a point that it wasn't their fault but His after all if He didn't take my husband every Tom, Dick, and Harriet (Harry) wouldn't come into my home and judge me or  analyze a situation they really didnt know anything about. Anyway back to what i was saying  I had worked up my self to a point where I believed if I had missed it somehow and maybe God's love had been replaced by His anger prayed.You see the thing was i was putting finishing touches to my Masters degree thesis while preparing for a film festival at work for which i was the Festival Director plus the regular routine of being  wife,mother, pastor's wife and children church teacher. I often had to work late into the night and be up early to a busy schedule and my prayer time became less.  Somewhere in my mind was the thought that God was not happy with me for not spending as much time as I should with him and so He withdrew His love and didn't bother to watch over us as He usually did. Thankfully my pastor's response was that God wasn't like that and he asked if as a mother i would punish my children by killing them if they offended or hurt me? The truth is I wouldn't even think of it so why would I think God who loved me more than i love my children do that. Though i knew God's nature to be love  my grieving heart was questioning this love.

I was invited to speak at a Church on 'What can separate us from the love of God' the text was from Romans8:35-39. The pastor said  he liked the way I carried on after my husbands death and kept serving and loving God. I on the other hand know it was quite a task because I had questioned God's love, wondered if being a Christian was worth it and wondered if death would separate me from that love. Looking at the Romans passage it struck me that the feeling being separated from God's love is two pronged first one can wrongly assume a decline or a withdrawal of God's love? Secondly, allowing the challenges and unpleasant situations of life get us to a place where we withdraw from him therefore attempting to separate our selves from His love? Thankfully in both cases God's love remains steadfast.

I turned on the TV on Saturday evening and tuned in to the Daystar channel movie of the week. A man who from the little I saw of the movie was either an Angel or the Lord himself took a woman who seemed to be having  a hard time accepting the fact that God loved her unconditionally to a beach by an ocean and asked her if she had ever went swimming in the ocean she answered in the affirmative then he asked if she remembered the wetness of the ocean or if she could measure its wetness she looked at him and said but the ocean is by nature wet in other words you can't separate the ocean from wetness. In my words to experience the ocean is to experience wetness. He then told her that's how God and love is. He is not just loving but love it's self. He then took her to a house with a baby in a cot it seems it was her daughter (when she was a baby) her heart went out to the baby and she wanted to carry her impulsively, he encouraged her to go ahead and then described God's love as being like the love she had for the little helpless baby who at the time of her birth could only eat,sleep and poop. That child didn't need to do anything she was loved just as she was. Imagine this baby didn't even have the capacity to love at the time but it didn't reduce the parents love. In the same manner we are loved because we are God's children and  being loved is part of the rights and privileges of sonship.

I was so blessed and reminded of God's unequivocal love for me. I asked them in the church I ministered how many of them did anything to earn God's love of course none of them so I asked what they could do to 'unearn'  God's love if there is a word like that. I am aware that sin has consequences and we sometimes have to live with the consequences of bad decisions, sin, failure etc but at no time does God's love for us cease. God remains righteous and hates sin but he loves us unconditionally the Bible says while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. We didn't do anything to make him love us neither do we deserve it. Look at it this way before we were born Christ had died for us and loved us in advance. Nothing we do or go through can seperate us from God's love. God can rebuke us, chasten us but He never stops loving us instead His heart breaks when we sin or fall.  He keeps reaching out to us in love. The fact that your husband died doesn't mean God doesn't love you instead let God's love lift you don't believe the lies the devil tells you that the challenges , sorrow,lack or even death has the capacity to seperate you from God's love because it doesn't when all fails cling to His love it's more than enough.

If anything I believe God's love for us is at its highest when we go through pain ,loss or suffering. If like me you have struggled with God's love because of grief know it 'that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord'!