Sprachen 
Last week during my quiet time with God I came across the above verse in the picture from Jeremiah chapter 31. This verse appealed to me and touched me very much. While reading I felt the heart of God and his great love for us humans. A love that is so much bigger than we can ever imagine, a love that always comes before us, a love that was always there, a love that is not linked to conditions. God’s love is an undeserved love that we cannot earn through our own efforts or good deeds and works. God has always loved us and He will always love us despite our mistakes and weaknesses. Our behavior does not change his love.
Throughout chapter 31 of Jeremiah I recognize God’s love for his people, his longing for people and his desire for community and relationship, he wants to draw people to himself. Despite all sins and despite the fact that people have turned away from God, he wants to be merciful and forgive. He is just waiting for them to turn around, recognize him and turn to him and ask for forgiveness. God wants to make a new covenant with his people by writing the law in their hearts and filling them with the Holy Spirit. This new covenant applies not only to the people of Israel, but to everyone who lives in a personal relationship with God. Jeremiah’s prophecies refer to Jesus Christ, through him we have a new beginning and reconciliation with God. With Jesus the new covenant of God began with us humans.
God fights for the love of every single person, because his nature is love, he is love himself. Looking back at my life so far, I can see traces of God’s love everywhere, it was always there, from the beginning. God first loved me without doing anything for it. Even in the times when I moved away from him, lived without him, I was not aware of his presence, he was there and searched for me and pulled me out of sheer kindness. When I didn’t recognize him, he already saw and knew me. Recognizing and meeting God’s love is the greatest gift in my life, I was able to experience how valuable I am to God and how unconditional His love is. His love for me is so great that he gave his life so that I can have access to my father again and that there is no longer any separation. He took sin (= separation from God) for me and for every person who accepts this gift of grace.
God’s love changes hearts. Because he loves us so much, we want to love too. He gives us the will to pass on his love to our fellow human beings. It gives us the strength to forgive. He gives us his view of people and circumstances. Because we are loved, we want to do good, be generous and compassionate. Because God loves us, we want to love him and live according to his will. Because God loves us we want to please him. Because God loves us, we are valuable.
“Dear Ones, let us love one another; for love is from God, and whoever loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love ”1 John 4: 7-8
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be reconciling for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us so, we should also love each other. Nobody has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfect in us ”1 John 4: 10-12
“Let us love, because he loved us first” 1 John 4:19
“Because Christ died for us at the time when we were still weak. Now hardly anyone dies for the sake of a just one; maybe for the sake of good he dares his life. But God shows his love for us in the fact that Christ died for us when we were still sinners ”Romans 5: 6-8
“But God, who is rich in mercy, in his great love with whom he loved us, also made us who were dead in sins alive with Christ – you are saved by grace – and he has brought us along raised and engaged in heaven in Christ Jesus so that in the coming times he would show the exuberant wealth of his grace through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus. Because by grace you are saved by faith, and not from you: it is God’s gift, not from works, so that no one can boast. Because we are his work, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in it. ”Ephesians 2: 4-10
