Loved with everlasting love, as I suffer

In the heavy weight of ongoing suffering, it’s so easy to doubt God’s love for us. I suppose this is why I write about His love so often. Because it’s an age-old question, deriving from our Genesis 3 fall with Satan’s hiss, “Did God actually say?”

What if my suffering means God doesn’t love me? Beloved in Christ, let’s believe God today, on this week in which we celebrate love.

Loved with everlasting hesed love of God, as I suffer

Scripture says God’s love is a defining love unique to only God, a kind that we can’t adequately translate from the Hebrew hesed. 

It’s loving-kindness, steadfast, enduring, unfailing, covenant, loyal, merciful, compassionate, faithful, unconditional, grace-filled, just, righteous, holy, eternal, never-ending love. We don’t even have words for God’s hesed love, but it encompasses God in His fundamental essence.

So, we can pray like Biblical laments:

I’m suffering, “but I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (Ps. 13:5). 

I’m suffering, “but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases” (Lam. 3:21-22a).

We can praise Him in order to call it to mind, into our suffering:

Loved with everlasting love,

drawn by grace that love to know,

Spirit sent from Christ above,

thou dost witness it is so.

(“Loved with Everlasting Love,” Robinson, G. W., 1890)

Loved with steadfast love because I’m in Christ Jesus

As we read of God’s hesed love in the Old Testament laments, we now see it displayed and shown to us on the cross. Beloved in Christ, Jesus is how we know His love still endures for us as we suffer.

Can I doubt his love for me,

when I trace that love’s design?

By the cross of Calvary

I am his and he is mine.

Loved with everlasting love, in permanent relationship

Because God brought you into a covenantal relationship with Jesus, God’s hesed love for you…is as Your loving Father.

O this full and precious peace

from his presence all divine;

In a love that cannot cease,

I am his and he is mine.

As believers, as those “in Christ,” nothing can separate us from His love. None of our earthly suffering would mean He doesn’t love us. His love is everlasting.

As I suffer, God’s everlasting love in Christ gives me grace to endure, in His loving presence

Taste the goodness of the Lord:

welcomed home to his embrace,

all his love, as blood outpoured,

seals the pardon of his grace.

Material taken from Near to God: A Devotional Bible Study of God’s Character in Our Suffering, Lauri A. Hogle. Copyright © 2022, Singing Christ’s Hope. 

A Playlist to praise God for His steadfast love, as I suffer

Are you like me? I need constant, daily, gospel-centered reminders when suffering is strong.

So, singing of His love has been God’s beautiful gift of love to remind me, on the days of my harsh illness symptoms and emotional mess. I have entire playlists of His Word’s love songs, created in those desperate moments, helping me to battle the enemy’s lies about God’s love for His suffering children. These are love songs to sing back to Him, praising Him for His unchanging hesed love, fundamental to who God is, as revealed in His Word.

If having some songs to sing of His love would bless you in your own suffering, sign up today and I’ll send you a professionally curated YouTube playlist with lyrics so you can sing them to Your Father and to your heart this week.

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