Nothing Can Separate Us
/“So now I live with the confidence that there is nothing in the universe with the power to separate us from God’s love. I’m convinced that his love will triumph over death, life’s troubles, fallen angels, or dark rulers in the heavens. There is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!”
Romans 8: 38-39
We can take great comfort and refuge in Christ's love for us. I have found the idea of God’s love to be something I can easily mentally ascend to without really, fully taking it to heart. You can have a mental understanding of something but it becomes something different when it is revealed through experience and relationship. When I began to take the step of faith to actually attempt to cultivate a relationship with God I was pleasantly surprised to find that God met me right where I was and spoke to me in a way I could understand.
”The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
Romans 8:16 NIV
Not in an audible voice, but in my spirit, I would find God speaking to me. As I sought God in prayer and reading scripture, I found this other voice begin to come up out of my spirit. What I had read would come back into my mind as I went through my life. What I had been praying about, God would speak to me through things I was experiencing. What surprised me was that it was in a very specific voice or language that I understood.
God knows you better than you know yourself. He knows all that you’ve experienced and the words and analogies that will resonate with you. In that way it becomes as relational and as personal as it gets. One of the things God began to deal with me about was his love for me. John 15:13 says:
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.”
What struck me about this verse was the idea of Christ referring to me as his friend. It was hard for me to get my mind around the idea of the holy son of God, the righteous King, calling me His friend. But I began to find great comfort not in an abstract idea of love but in a relational friendship. God was revealing this to me through His Word but sometimes I was able to personalize the scripture through the prism of my experience and language.
One way this happened was through my experience of art and music. There would be times when art that moved me would become re-contextualized through my relationship with Christ. While there is artistic intent and meaning to consider, the way we relate and respond to art in a personal way is always ours. So I wanted to share an experience I had with a song that helped reveal to me this side of God’s love in a personal way.
The song "Make You Feel My Love" by Bob Dylan was always one of my favorites. It was the song me and my beautiful wife Jessica played during our "First Dance" at our wedding. The song has become a modern standard and since its release in 1997, it’s been covered by more than 450 artists.
While likely a simple love song, I came across an article years ago that happened to off-hand mention that some believed the song was sung from the perspective of Jesus. So, it would be like Jesus singing the song to humanity. The next time I heard the song I was reminded of the article and listened to it from that perspective. Normally, Im not too keen on any overly romantic connotation in a religious song, but I saw this in a different light. Not as just romantic, but in a way a best friend would do anything for their friend or a parent would do anything for their child. I was taken off guard how much it affected me.
Christ's love for us is real and there is nothing that can separate us from it: not even COVID-19.
Watch Jason sing the song here:
“Make You Feel My Love” By Bob Dylan
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love
When the evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love
I know you haven't made your mind up yet
But I will never do you wrong
I've known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong
I'd go hungry; I'd go black and blue
And I'd go crawling down the avenue
No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love
The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain't seen nothing like me yet
I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of this Earth for you
To make you feel my love