God’s love: Personal testimonies

Happy valentine’s day!!!! It’s the day where the whole world celebrates love and one of the most interesting days in the year. I for one have never been a fan of Valentine’s day, I think wearing red today is cringe-worthy. Don’t mind me, if you love to wear red on Val’s day please do so. If you have not subscribed to my blog yet, what are you waiting for?👀👀 Click the subscribe button above👆👆👆 before I start judging you. Thank you.

So for today’s post, the Holy Spirit inspired me to reach out to people and ask for their personal testimonies on how the love of God has helped them in life. Reading the entries that came in, I was blessed and I believed you will be blessed as well. God has loved us first before we even knew he existed. His love is greater than the love of anybody or anything.

So I sent this message to people:

“Hey dear, how are you? I’m reaching out to you because I’m writing about the love of God and sharing personal testimonies for my blog this week. Especially because it’s Val’s day. Do you mind sharing something that the love of God kept you through? You can choose to be anonymous or not. Let me know your thoughts. Thank you. Revelation 12:11a (KJV) And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony;” 

These were their wonderful and honest responses:

“Hey, Sis. To be absolutely candid, I can’t speak much for the love of God. More like the grace of God. But then again, I guess his grace is an extension of his love. He's managed to keep me afloat in the midst of constantly being poor. Always managed to make rent and not be homeless. Also, I got healed from a terminal disease years ago, and the expensive procedure that was used to confirm that I was now fine was totally paid for by insurance, even though I wasn’t eligible for that kind of massive coverage on my basic student insurance. Then God's grace has often opened doors for me that I was ordinarily not qualified to enter…”

- W.

“Honestly, in the past couple months, the recurring thought on my heart has been if I truly understood God or His love before now. I mean, I've been in church for the longest time, heard it preached, sang it, shared about it and yet it still blew my mind after an experience I went through recently. I got robbed and raped last year and it's been amazing how aggressively God fought for me with His love, how He took my mind into a steel vault custody of His love and just covered me, how He delivered me from shame and gave me the boldness to speak about it. I've always had a Ph.D. in repressing stuff, the littlest of feelings, I keep down, so being able to talk about this is a miracle. And what's more? When I shared about it, I saw God roll out an avalanche of this His incredible love to free other people from silence and allow the healing of God's love come into the cracks and crevices of their hearts. God is real and bigger! I really don't care how loud or long the symptoms of your pain have been, His love is stronger and reckless and mighty fierce and will get to you. We only need to look at the cross to see it. I'm proof that God loves and would do anything to keep His own. I'm the aggressively beloved one.”

-Liz

"In 2014,  I couldn't complete my first-semester in university fee because my dad was just recovering from bells-palsy. Although he had managed to gather some money for my fees which I did not pay into the school account immediately. This same period, my mum had turbulences in her business which I felt I could help her pending the time she gets paid back but to my greatest disappointment, the money hung. There was no profit in what she invested in neither did she get her capital back. I was stranded in school and I couldn't make it to class. I didn't tell anyone, not my friends, fellowship members or even my dad. It was very embarrassing for me. I tried to get help from the bursary department but nah nah I was rejected without empathy. However, my fellowship with God was constant. At midnight I would cry deeply not because I was sad but I knew God's love was there for me. I was blessed with the presence of God at those hard times to the extent of me donating my part-time of my feeding allowances to others who couldn't pay their fees. Hmmm, it was really an awesome time because that period enabled the word of God to be established in my heart. Not even death, hunger, peril or sword can separate us from the love of Jesus... I learned that a situation may not be good to us but it is good for us because we know that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose. Selah.

- I

Oh my days, what days we are in!!!! It's been awesome in my family, I know how many times in a week my mum would say marry oooo either jokingly or seriously, in this part if the world where once a lady has crossed her mid-twenties it's like she'll never be able to marry again. But searching through the Scriptures, I learned so many things like The most important person loves me, there's no need for rush, I just need to be grounded and rooted his God's love. His perfect love casts out all fear. "And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!"(Romans 5:5 TPT) I learned to accept myself and focus on his love for me. His love removed rush from my subconscious and set me on track

- C

One of my love stories:

God's love is so thick. I remember in 2016 right after I finished my master's program I was looking for a job.  Interviews at many organizations came so easily for me. I started in November and I thought by January I will have a good job offer and live happily ever after. To my shock, nothing was coming in. I was dead broke, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul with almost exhausted credit cards. God gave me a job in March (He was probably tired of hearing my voice in prayers, lol) but it was per time and I was over-qualified for the position. I was managing it then out of nowhere I got fired within a month of starting. Sadness crept in slowly. It was amusing because at the interviews I was always among the top 2 to 3 finalists. I got flown around the country by organizations for interviews and lodged into hotels because they liked my qualifications. I did amazingly at the interviews but I never got picked. This was the period God showed me that his grace is sufficient for me. I did not want to ask my parents for money because I knew I should have outgrown the asking and moved to the giving. God used his love to break and mold me into the person that is fully dependant on him rather than my skills and qualifications. It was an eight-month period of learning that God is literally my source. I took jobs that were not dignifying and worked under terrible weather conditions at odd hours. I moved from a nice apartment to a tiny basement apartment that I can afford in a small town.  It was a process, a love journey. But finally, I interviewed for a position I was not qualified for just for interviewing sake. I did not envision that they will hire me, I went only because I needed to sharpen my interview skills. And all glory be to God, I got the job. His love showed me that the pressure is not on me to sell myself, it's his aroma in him that opens doors. This has kept me going now, leaning on God and not my own understanding. I'm so thankful for his love.

-Bibi

My favorite song that teaches me about God's love in ways I could have ever imagined.

If you are out there and you feel like you are not loved by anyone, I promise you that God's love is bountiful and reckless. Here are some scriptures to remind you of God's love for you even when you can't feel it. I promise you, it's there.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 8:37-39  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

John 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.

You Are God's Favorite Valentine! ❤️

With love,

Bibi

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