Gods Love? Song of Songs

[dgolvach]

All the replys reflect my sentiment. I actually had a minister tell me that I was too caught up in thinking God loved me personally. He said God really just loves his church in which you but a tiny speck. The more I read on this amd meditate, I am starting to ponder that perhaps each of us apart from, one another, have a void so huge that only ALL of God's love will fill it. I can see this in my own life because I'm a needy boy. God just must have this capacity.

God Bless

Dan

[stan4257]

All the replys reflect my sentiment. I actually had a minister tell me that I was too caught up in thinking God loved me personally. He said God really just loves his church in which you but a tiny speck. The more I read on this amd meditate, I am starting to ponder that perhaps each of us apart from, one another, have a void so huge that only ALL of God's love will fill it. I can see this in my own life because I'm a needy boy. God just must have this capacity.

Very intuitive. Thank you.

Being made in God's image meeds little imagination to realise that what we actually are is a lot less than what being in God's image means, so what remains for us to become fully into God's image is the rest of him that we are not already.

You said it better:

"have a void so huge that only ALL of God's love will fill it."

We start as a type of flattened out airless basket ball sphere until the infinite breath of God's love pumps us up individually to be what we should and could be.

[Artemus Prime]

Hi Stan... I think I blew it by even listing the Song of Songs in the title of my thread because my question is really just the A or B and my title implies that my question is specific to this one particular book when it really isn't. I'm trying to understand the difference between Gods love for the Church and Gods love for us as individuals. Any thoughts?

OK. But I don't feel that my answer will be much different, Dan. I know from personal experience, based on facts and not simply ideals, that my Heavenly Father loves me as an individual loves an individual. Doesn't make sense but it is a fact.

And wrapped up in that answer is another fact. What I know about God's love for me is not exclusive to me or it would make even less sense. That love applies individually to all my brothers and sisters in Christ who together make up the church. Each one of us is loved as an individual.

And, dare I say it without stirring up too much controversy, I know that God loves individually all those who are oppressed or poor or caught up in an environment of hopelessness and need. How do I know? How does any born again Christian know? Well, to start with that love for the poor and the oppressed and the bound is inherently the Spirit of God. It says so in scripture. But even more than words, many of us have experienced the feeling of God's love as the Spirit of God takes over our emotions when we meet a need. It is a one-on-one individual meeting through us of God's love for somebody in need as an individual. When coming across such a situation, and more than that, creating opportunities to do so, the Holy Spirit takes over our emotions. My heart and yours and anybody else of the same persuasion leaps out to meet that need with a love that could only be an expression of God's love to that person in need as an individual.

There is nothing corporate about God's love, nor need we put limits on our understanding of our Heavenly Father's love by suggesting his incapacity to be anything less than loving to us all as individuals.

Sure, our Heavenly Father's love for so many at the same time becomes a group pouring out of the Spirit, but not one of the individual concerns is lost in the process.

That is why I thought that the thread you introduced with reference to Song of Songs was so relevant. It is all about individual love and a reminder of how individual our Heavenly Father's love is for us as individuals.

Lots and lots and countless numbers of us, but all individuals in the matchless and boundless love of God.

A great post, and I agree with you...