4 The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. 5 The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. 6 In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. 7 The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. 8 Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. 9 He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. 10 He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him--the dark rain clouds of the sky. 12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. 13 The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. 14 He shot his arrows and scattered [the enemies], great bolts of lightning and routed them. 15 The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of breath from your nostrils. 16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. 17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. 18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. 19 He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.
14 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
27 “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all ; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
3 The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.”
“May God bring home to you a sense of your safety in Christ Jesus! May He assure you that your name is graven on His hand and whisper in your ear the promise, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’” Charles H. Spurgeon
“For the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.” Frederick William Faber
“When we are anxious we are inclined to overprepare. We wonder what to say when we are attacked, how to respond when we are being interrogated, and what defense to put up when we are accused. It is precisely this turmoil that makes us lose our self-confidence and creates in us a debilitating self-consciousness. What is important is not that we have a little speech ready but that we remain deeply anchored in the love of Jesus, secure about who we are in this world and why we are here.” Henri Nouwen
“We need to keep our heart full of a sense of the love of God. This is the greatest perspective available to us against the power of temptation in the world...Fill your heart with a sense of the love of God in Christ, and apply the eternal design of grace and shed blood to yourselves. Accept all the privileges of adoption, justification, and acceptance with God. Fill your heart with thoughts of the beauty of holiness...then in the ordinary course of walking with God, you will experience great peace and security from temptation.” John Owen, Sin and Temptation ed. John Houston
“God’s desire to communicate happiness to the creature entails a willingness to experience loss to the sake of the beloved. It is exceeding congruous for God, a being of infinite goodness and love, to give to the creature the highest sort of expression of love—which is expensed for the beloved. Therefore through the mission of the Son, God reveals a love that suffers in behalf of the beloved. Now I can clearly and distinctly conceive how the giving of Christ is the perfect expression of love, as the greatest expense in a lover. For the incarnation expresses the love of God in a way that is exceedingly noble and excellent and agreeable to the glorious perfections of God.” Jonathan Edwards
“‘There is no fear in love’, writes the apostle John, ‘but perfect love drives out fear...’ He goes on to point to the source of that perfect love: ‘We love because He first loved us’. In other words, the cure to fear is not a change in circumstances, rather a deep grounding in the love of God. I ask God to reveal His love to me directly, or through my relationships with those who also know Him—a prayer I think God takes great delight in answering. When I get depressed about my present failures, I ask God to remind me of my true identity: one who will be made perfect and has already been forgiven. ‘You’ve got to go deeper’, said the nun to my burned out pastor. ‘Sink the well into a water table that never runs dry’...Thomas Merton conceded that everything in modern city life conspires against such surrender. We worry (fear) about money, about what we need to have and to know, about whom to compete with and what is slipping out of our control...(he) found the secret to true freedom: If we live to please God alone (the One who loves us), we set ourselves free from the cares and worries that press in on us.” Phillip Yancey
“Love of man necessarily arises out of love of God.” John Hooper
“My hope is not in a cure today. My hope is not the absence of suffering and comfort returned. My hope is in the presence of the One who promises never to leave or forsake, the One who declares nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God.” (Romans 8:39). Nothing. Your story is a good story. In the grief, pain and hard, the Author has a plan. It may feel like a desperate breaking of your very heart, but suffering is not the absence of God or good.” Kara Tippetts
“Grace is the power of God pulsating with this passionate love of God, this jolting, blazing, dangerous love that pierces all of humanity’s pitch black.” Ann Voskamp
“God’s love is always supernatural, always a miracle, always the last thing we deserve.” Robert Horn
“Many people have difficulty believing God is a God of love....If you really want to know the reality of God’s love, look at the Cross....It was love that restrained Him when He was falsely accused of blasphemy and led to Golgotha to die with common thieves. He raised not a hand against His enemies. It was love that kept Him from calling legions of angels to come to His defense. It was love that made Him, in a moment of agonizing pain, pause and give hope to a repentant sinner who cried, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom’ (Luke 23:42)....Does God love us? Yes....and the proof is the Cross.” Billy Graham
“The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing–to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy–love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.” I echo that. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.” Frederick Buechner