The Power of God's Love
**This is a picture of one of the families I met in the hospital in Cambodia. The little boy on the left was having a lot of trouble breathing and was receiving constant oxygen when we first met them. We prayed for healing in Jesus' name and when we came back the next day he was breathing completely normally and starting to become quite annoyed by his IV. He went from being a very sick little boy, to rolling around on the floor, giving his mom a run for her money. Later we found out that they are Christians and we were able to pray with them again. The name of Jesus has so much power!
The Power of God's Love:
I think we often underestimate how much the simple, pure, unrestrained love of God can do. It’s easy when we grow up singing songs like Jesus loves meto blow past the intense significance of God’s love. Knowing that God loves me is different than knowing how God’s love has changed me. Actually, I think that’s one of the most important things we could ever know as followers of Jesus: How God’s love has changed us. Think about that right now, how are you different because of God’s love, how has knowing that you’re loved by God changed your life?
For me, I think the biggest thing is FREEDOM. If I am loved by God, truly, unconditionally loved, then I am completely free. Free to be 100% myself, free to make mistakes, free to not be perfect. The Bible says, “perfect love casts out all fear” that means God’s love has the power to take away all my fear, all my insecurities. I don’t have to be afraid of anythingbecause I can know that I am loved by God, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
I just got back from being on outreach for the past month and there are so many amazing stories I could share, but I’ll try to pick just a couple that I think are particularly special. While in Cambodia, I was with a small team of health care professionals on a short medical outreach. We stayed in a remote village at a Homestay run by a Malaysian missionary. While we were there, we helped out in the hospital and did some eye clinics in the nearby villages. In the hospital we mostly worked on the Pediatric ward which was quite full, mostly with patients that had Dengue Fever (there is a huge outbreak in Cambodia right now).
Working in the hospital was a really amazing learning experience for me in a lot of ways, and I definitely learned, even more so, how to lean on God in difficult situations. It was challenging learning how to work with people from a different nation and culture (especially when you can’t really speak the same language) all while trying to remember how to do things in the hospital that I haven’t done in over a year. Let’s just say, there were some stressful moments, but God’s grace is so good!
One of my favorite moments in the hospital was actually on our last day. I was unfamiliar with most of hospital staff that were on duty at the time, so they weren’t super keen to let me help out. I stood watching for a while as parents brought their kids to the front to be treated. A grandmother came and sat in one of the chairs holding her baby granddaughter. The baby couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I just looked at them and smiled and the grandmother smiled back at me and tried to tell me something in Khmer (the native language). I couldn’t understand anything she was saying but she kept on staring at me with a huge grin on her face. I knelt down and started playing with the baby’s toes as she sat there, when I looked back at her grandmother, she had tears in her eyes.
Later, I went and found them on their mat and sat for a while. The mom and grandmother kept giving me the baby to hold (I was not about to refuse that kind of offer!). While I was sitting with them, completely unable to communicate, the Dr. came by and told me that the baby had febrile seizures the night before and that they were really concerned about her. Honestly, I was pretty shocked because seemed to be doing pretty well the entire time I had seen her.
As I processed this new information I realized how God’s love had been working through me. I had absolutely no way of communicating with these people, they didn’t understand anything I said and couldn’t read anything on my translator app, yet they could feel the love of God in me. They knew I was full of peace and kindness and they wanted to be near my presence. After a stressful night, living in fear of losing their precious little girl, something in me gave them hope. Oftentimes God reminds me that His love is the real magic in the world. I can serve hundreds of people, or give and eloquent speech, or study the Bible until I’m blue in the face, but the thing that always brings breakthrough is His love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says it best,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Sometimes, when we don’t know what to do or what to say, simply allowing ourselves to be a vessel of God’s love is the most powerful thing we can be. I hope this testimony encourages you to allow God’s love to flow through you and take note as things in the world around you start to change and transform.