Love Is in the Air - Dare 2 Share
Helping youth leaders empower
students to reach their world.
Helping youth leaders empower
students to reach their world.

Love Is in the Air

How to embrace Valentine’s Day for the glory of God.

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I used to hate Valentine’s Day. It felt so commercialized, like just an excuse to fill the shelves between Christmas and Easter. As a youth leader, it was my least favorite holiday, watching starry-eyed teenagers feel the pressure to find a sweetheart for the school dance or Valentine swaps. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that a holiday focused on love might not be so bad after all.

In the depths of our soul, all of us need a love that can last forever. And this time of year can be a wonderful opportunity to share the love of Jesus and to encourage your students to do the same. Remind them that the Gospel acrostic can help make those conversations more clear. You can also remind them (and yourself!) of the following truths about how deeply God loves each of us.

Thinking Out Loud

In Ed Sheeran’s song Thinking Out Loud, he sings abut a love that goes way beyond the middle school topsy-turvy, touchy-feely pop song version of love that has come to define the greatest gift on Earth. Take a look at these lyrics:

When my hair’s all but gone and my memory fades

And the crowds don’t remember my name

When my hands don’t play the strings the same way,

I know you will still love me the same

This song is describing a long-lasting earthly loveone that can point us to the only love that will last way, way past when “my hair’s all but gone and my memory fades.”

The kind of love described in the song is possible from another human being, and a few (who are very fortunate) have found it. But an eternal and everlasting kind of love can come only from an eternal and everlasting Creator.

God’s Everlasting Love

Here’s what God is thinking out loud:

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.’ Jeremiah 31:3

In the depths of our soul, we need a love that can last forever, and what God is thinking out loud for you to hear is this: I have loved you forever, and I will love you forever.

Think back to the beginning of time. When God said, “Let there be light”—He loved you! Hard to fathom, isn’t it?

But even before that, He loved you! Before there were stars, He loved you! Before there was the sun and moon, He loved you!

And even more mind-blowing is this: God’s love not only stretches back through infinity, before the beginning of time, but it also plays on into the eternity of the future, like an unbroken melody of acceptance and grace!

Before there were stars, sun, and the moon, God loved you!

The Effects of God’s Love

So when your hair is all but gone, you will wear God’s love like a crown (Psalm 103:4).  When the crowds don’t remember your name, He has carved your name on the palm of His hand (Isaiah 49:16).  When your hands don’t play the strings of life the way they used to, His strength will carry you through the end of your life and even through death itself.

And at that moment, you and I will know the true meaning of this beautiful picture:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Isn’t that amazing? Right now, we get only a blurry picture of love. We experience shades of it with a friend or a spouse, as if looking into a smudged, broken mirror. But one day we’ll be overwhelmingly confronted by the embodiment of love itself. We’ll gaze into the eyes of Jesus Christ, and then every fiber of our being will be enlightened and awoken to the everlasting love of God!

So knowing all this, perhaps it’s time we start thinking out loud about the love of God, as well. Our friends who don’t know Jesus have a hole in their hearts that can be filled only with the everlasting love of God. God is faithful in drawing them close, but we’re the carriers of this loving message, for the sake of THE Cause of Christ.

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