Love conquers: revisited.

Last week the family I have been attending announced the topic of what they would focus on for 2016: Love Wins. And I was once more made amazed as I was just two weeks earlier, standing in awe of His continued revelation on His love. 

Two weeks before that I was reading from Acts 8 on Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch when God gave me a new revelation on His heart: the inclusiveness of His love, that at the center of His heart is always about saving souls. And by His grace, this reading also healed me from my wound.  

Love that conquers wounded lives
Has it ever happened to you, that you put a certain issue of your life into an invisible closet and you continued your life pretending that you don't have that issue with you anymore. At least I knew I did it to my wound. 
Several times at my last church in Singapore people would come up to me to say, "God loves you." And I never really believed that. That knowledge of God's love for me stopped at my head, and never really reached my heart. If you knew my background, an avid activist in student ministry in my undergraduate years (core committee, worship leader, small-group leader), at the same time a Sunday School teacher at my church, and at least 7 years after that I was in parachurch environment -- a few close friends I shared my wound with, couldn't believe what they heard, that I had difficulty to believe in His love for me. 

For years what I believed to be true, that God's love for me was less than what He graciously gave to others, was healed at the moment He revealed this new meaning on His heart from an 'old' passage that I've read many times before. If He cares so much about the salvation of the Ethiopian eunuch and mine, practically gentiles with more than two thousands years apart, all the more He would have my best interest at heart. And to trust His heart is enough, regardless of any storm I am and will be in.

Love that conquers doubts
I could pretty much imagine what Philip may have had in mind (in much lesser degree of a personal experience, just a few months ago) -- being summoned in a sudden, with little information, Philip sets out with immediate obedience. Divinely Philip intervened the Ethiopian eunuch's journey, As he was going back home, he was sitting in his wagon reading about the early preacher Isaiah (v.28). 

I wonder if Philip would have showed the slightest hint of amusement from the moment he ran up to the eunuch's chariot (v.30), to when he started preaching the good news (v.35) and to baptizing the eunuch (v.38). Because this was one of the very first beginnings when God started to continuously reveal to the disciples that His kingdom is also meant for non-Jews. 

In his obedience Philip exhibits God's perfect love that conquers doubts. 

The unconquerable love
This battle of mine I am currently fighting may not be the last as more others may come, but indeed He has won all of them for me, because this perfect love that conquers my wound and doubts comes from a God who wins.