This morning as I was spending time doing my devotional, one of the readings was Psalm 136:1-12.

As I finished reading through this it struck me to how many times the Psalmist reminded us that God’s “…steadfast love endures forever” If you finish through the rest of the Psalm you find that 26 times the Psalmist says this phrase.

It got me thinking about this.  Specifically in my own life.  I realized suddenly as I sat there, that deep down, I worried that God would stop loving me.  This actually kind of shocked me because I didn’t think that I felt that way, but reading scripture and asking God to speak to you through it has a way of bringing out thoughts that we really didn’t even know we had.

Coming from a background of abandonment I guess it isn’t too unheard of for me to feel this way.  When you are left by a parent, who is supposed to love you all your life, and instead walks out and denies you exist….that can really make you wonder about love.  When your husband, who is supposed to love you till death parts you, suddenly just leaves after 13 years of marriage stating he doesn’t love you…that only adds to your doubts. But honestly, the funny thing is that I really never realized I felt this way until this morning as I read through those verses.  I wonder if that is why the psalmist wrote it so many times.  It is as if he realized that we would all go through hurts in this life that would leave us feeling unloved and then question who God is and if God would continue to love us.

Now as I thought about this, I said I don’t doubt on a daily basis that God loves me…but I realized that if I was honest with myself  it is just this very quiet foreboding sense deep in the back of my mind that one day, he just won’t love me anymore.

I didn’t doubt on a daily basis that my husband loved me…but I always had a future fear that one day he wouldn’t love me anymore.  Now I don’t entirely know why that is, but as I have studied and learned more about my family of origin and my thought process through my life, I realized that being abandoned as a child really had an effect on how I view most of my life and up until that moment this morning, I didn’t think that it had transferred to my thoughts about God…but deep down it had.

If you were to ask me today, “do you believe God loves you”…I would say yes…and I really do believe that! But after that thought came to my mind, I could no longer deny that it was there. God revealed something deep inside me this morning through reading His word.  As soon as the thought came to my mind, I cried out to God.  I asked for him to help me…to forgive me for even thinking that way and to help me to know that He is NEVER going to stop loving me.  And as usually He answered through His word.  As I looked at the verse of the day…it was Romans 8:39

“nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What a great reminder.  The truth is, things in this world are going to bring us to a place where the people we count on to love us are going to let us down.  It may not be as drastic as what I have experienced or it may be far worse, but the reality is that no human will ever be able to love us the way only God can and the way only God always will!  Does this mean we shouldn’t trust that people will keep loving us?  Of course not, what is does mean is that our life, our heart and all that is in us needs to be ultimately built on God…when He is our foundation, when we are firm and secure in His love, we have a confidence because we know that no matter who on this earth stops loving us, He NEVER will.  AS we go throughout our day, let us be like the psalmist, reminding ourselves that ” the steadfast love of God endures forever”