"United In Praise"

"I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore." (Psalms 86:12)
Just in case you might have missed the point, I will attempt to make it from a different angle. God's love is not conditioned upon our ability to be obedient, it is conditioned upon our acceptance of it. I find this hard to share without getting all choked up; but God's love for you and I is put out there for everyone and anyone who might want to accept it. Willing to accept it, is more like it! Because once you step into this powerful love, your life is never going to be the same. Going back to the "first love" issue, and as to what that actually represents, just the sheer power of His love should be enough to hold us and prevent us from going astray. I know it might not seem that is how it works at times, but if really stop and consider what it was that turned your heart, it wasn't just the fact that He saved you: it was that He loves you! But I'm a brat, and I do things that are selfish and disgusting; how could He still love me? I know, it's hard to understand. Sometimes it takes more faith to believe that I am worthy of His love, than it does to believe that He loves me. But that's the thing we need to stop. We are not worthy of His love, but He still loves us! But why? How could He? I might be starting to make the point a little clearer; or maybe I'm just muddying up the water. That reminds me, I need to get one of my favorite pictures hung up. It's been setting on the side of my desk forever, and I need to have it displayed to remind me of what I truly am. If you have seen this picture, it shows a man weeping at the foot of the cross with his head bowed between his arms; but in the reflection of the water at the base of the cross, he is looking up and is smiling with such great joy on his face. He loves us so much! We truly do need to rest in His love...
"What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one -for God himself has given us right standing with himself? Who then will condemn us? No one -for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God's right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, "For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.") No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is our through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow -not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below -indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39) NLT