THE LOVE OF CHRIST

Who can remove you from your relationship with Jesus once you've surrendered to His Lordship? 

Is there any force, anywhere, that can come between you and the Son of God? 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Romans 8:35

This sevenfold list represents the hatred poured out against the followers of Jesus (even more so in these, the 'last days'). But know that the attacks cannot stop us from experiencing the love of Christ. Rather than pulling us away from our Lord, they actually draw us closer to Him. 

The assaults only make us cling to Him more.

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded 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 created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

'More than conquerors' describes a lopsided victory in which the enemy is completely routed. This is not the language of 'conceit' but of confidence in Christ. He defeated death and because we are crucified with Him, we cannot be touched by anything that dares sever our relationship with Him. By the grace of God, we take the very thing that is designed to destroy our faith and use it as a stepping stone ... not allowing it to be a rock of stumbling. 

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

We may never arrive at the place of knowing the fullness of Christ’s love for us, but it should be what we meditate upon every day ...

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:16-19

The love of Christ is ‘wide’ enough to encompass all mankind, ‘long’ enough to last for eternity, ‘deep’ enough to reach the most depraved sinner, and ‘high’ enough to lift you above the cares of this world.