Love Never Walks Alone

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 

--Ephesians 4:2 (NIV)


What's important is not the burden you carry but the way you carry it.
--Lena Horne

In what way are we carrying burdens, or bearing with each other? Are we carrying them with love?  

Love is the fact, emotion, and priority that can become most quickly strained or tested. Love often hurts, because it is so close to our dreams and desires.  

We rejoice with each other, and we hurt for those we love if they are hurting or in trouble. We hurt whenever we sacrifice something dear to us, for a better good. We hurt if we work or give in love, and yet it seems to do no good.

True love is of God. Its strength is measureless and changeless.

The best of being alive is love, that invaluable quality, action, or word that meets each person exactly as needed most. 
Love never walks alone. When we walk in Love, Hope and Faith go with us. 

(c) 2011 Opinari and Jean Purcell

New Page: I GIVE YOU PERMISSION...

2/17/11-See the newest page: I give You permission...
by Not All Roads Lead Home author, Jane Bullard (pen name for Not All Roads...).

When All Else Fails...

"I lift up my eyes to the hills—

where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth.... 

the Lord is your shade at your right hand; 

 the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night"

(Psalm 121: 1,2; 5b,6).

 A strong man went up into the mountains of the northwest United States. He took three books with him, a Bible, a Koran, and a book about Buddhism. He had set the goal of staying in the mountains, which he knew well, until he knew what he believed about God, creation, life, meaning, and purpose. He deeply desired to know what he believed, what he could believe in, or Who.... "What is true? What is truth?"

He settled in at his camping site, and eventually began his mountain quest by opening the Bible he had with him. He spent days reading from it and reflecting, then he realized that he knew, by grace, that his key questions were being answered. He did not fully understand all of the spiritual things and deep mysteries now in his thoughts, but he had connected with God, at a personal level. He had the main answer he had desired, and he had prayed, in faith.

He prepared to go back home, down the mountain. As he returned, he went not as the same man who had gone up there. God had met with him there and spoken to him on the printed pages, and by His Spirit. The strong man was a new man. He was a new man in Christ.


"All who are oppressed may come to him. He is a refuge for them in their times of trouble. All those who know your mercy, Lord, will count on you for help. For you have never yet forsaken those who trust in you" (Psalm 8: 9, 10).

"I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Gardener" (John 15:1).

Psalm 121 verses are from the New International Version of the Bible.  Psalm 8 and the gospel of John verses are from The Living Bible.

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Faith and Marriage Gifts of Grace

Daily life deals with, confronts, and reflects theological beliefs.

God spoke all these words, saying:
    

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 

out of the house of bondage.
     

“You shall have no other gods before Me. 

(Exodus 20: 1-3, Holy Bible-New King James Version-NKJV)

For almost 30 years, I have urged skeptics to give God a chance. I have urged them to open minds closed against God, and hearts, too. I am always looking for more convincing ways to show how marvelous God is! It is a challenge, for it is very much like trying to show this unique love to someone who has never experienced or wanted any kind of love. 

I believe that my marriage had become almost a god to me. I thought of it the most, how to make it better, how something was missing. The happiness in marriage I craved was lost once, and I, too, thought I knew about love, but did not really know how to love, to forgive faults, to speak from my heart and to listen with it, too. I did not know how to be kind in the midst of disagreement. In busy lives, estrangement creeps slowly between the two of marriage, if they have no steady foundation. When any of us welcome God's love, within heart, mind, spirit, and soul, then we begin to grow into His kind of love. That love can increase in us, if we allow it. That love grows more tender as if naturally so, if we allow His love. That love of God makes all the difference for those who surrender and win. The love of God: I discovered it through pain and separation. As I sought to reach God, He helped me find. I began to realize that I should have no other gods before Him, not marriage, which had been most important, or children, work, and so on. God's Spirit, by then alive in me, helped me see, with spiritual eyes, the vast difference between solely human "love" and the transforming love of God. He changes people from the inside out, whoever will walk with Him by faith, day by day....

God is our God, not marriage, family, work, or any other thing. Not religion, which cannot save a living soul. And my lack of spiritual sight in those years did not stop God. In fact, He opened my eyes when the time was right, and I knew, spiritually and intellectually and emotionally, that God is present for each person through His holy Word, the Bible, by which He helps, counsels, protects, comforts, and leads redeemed souls. His Word was in many books I had read during two years of separation in marriage. I had not realized then their main secret was the inclusion of God's words of freedom and life.

Jesus said, "It is for freedom that I have set you free." How wonderful, inexpressibly good and pleasing! Some have mistaken my linking of marriage and faith to mean that I turned to God to save my marriage. Actually, I turned to God for myself; I reached out for God to help me survive divorce and take on a completely single life, on my own with no part in my husband's life. That was in 1980, a momentous spiritual, marriage, and family year. God turned my husband and me around unexpectedly, quickly, and dynamically over a few intense months of questioning, fears, illness, running, and, finally, trusting God. Those days continue to affect, for good, our children, grandchildren, and wider-ranging family and friends. God has done so much more reconciling beyond our marriage that we still speak of it with amazement. We have come in touch again with relationships that seemed to be part of the past, of friendships and relatives. It keeps expanding. That is all part of God's work of grace! 

God loves you! You may not at this moment feel His love, or believe in Him or His love, but even so God is reaching out to you now. He loves you, as you are, without your trying to clean up your act or change in any way. He wants you to receive Him now, as part of a divine plan for your life since before you were born. Through Jesus, His son, God wants you to know you belong in His kingdom now and forever...if you will agree. He knows our motives that we do not even know, about ourselves. He knows your every need. He loves you with an everlasting love, divine and permanent. Changeless, immeasurable love of God.

My hope for everyone, single or married, is that they will know God and His help through His Son, Jesus. Yet, many of us run. We run from being saved. We run from promises so great they challenge the most vivid imagination or dream. Why do we do this? One guess is that we actually fear the best, happiness, joy, and all that is most beautiful and wonderful of Life. And we need to run to Him, calling out for Him even if we are not sure He is real: "God, if You are real, show me, help me." He is faithful. His love endures forever (Psalm 138). God's love is reaching out for us all the time. Here is the first scripture through which God began to get my attention, and I began to listen to, reflect upon, and want to believe them: 

Fear not, for I am with you;
      Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
      I will strengthen you,
      Yes, I will help you,
      I will uphold you with My righteous right hand

(Isaiah 41:10-NKJV).

Amen.
(c) Jean Purcell - aka Jane Bullard, author, Not All Roads Lead Home 

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Marriage Can Come Alive Again

Times, maybe years, of misery in marriage... some of us have been there. Some of you are there now. It is hard to explain to others exactly how you feel, or even exactly why, sometimes. Many others are there now, whether or not they show it. The feelings and commitments of the past feel dead for them, too. Or, they've been bitterly disappointed. Their hearts are grieving. Some, on the other hand, think their feelings in marriage have grown cold, or are dead.  Sometimes the unhappiness feels like an unbearable weight pressing them down.  Is that where you are right now, in some misery like that? 


You are not alone. Whatever you do later, first know that God is more important than marriage, for He created and designed it in its first perfection. He never gave up on it, when male and female created by Him went their own way. 

You may not feel that is true, but be assured that right now you are accepted by the Beloved, if you are still here. You are accepted by God just as you are. In your pain, questions, doubts about life, God, or marriage. Or all three. He knows all about it. He knows you. Jesus knew suffering, rejection, and many people with willful hearts. Jesus came and lived among men, as the one divine and human man, without any sin, yet touched by its effects from the world. Seek God now, dear friend. I know, having been acquainted with grief also: God is faithful all the time, and His love never ends. His love is forever, and He is willing to show us the way. Trust Him.  


When marriage is at its lowest and coldest, it's true, (though it does not seem so), that...IF love was ever there at all ..., then it is still there. It may be buried or frozen by feelings, doubts, or disappointments; but love never dies.  - (pen name) Jane Bullard, Not All Roads Lead Home




We have the greatest prenuptial agreement in the world. It's called love. - Gene Perett, comedy writer (Carol Burnett show, Bob Hope, and others), husband, and father