Love That Never Ceases

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 340, Love That Never Ceases.

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3, verses 22 and 23.

Let that settle for just a moment. Because these words — the ones you just heard — were not written from a place of comfort. They were not composed in a season of peace. They were written in the ruins. Jerusalem had been leveled. The temple, burned to the ground. The people, taken away. Jeremiah was not standing in some quiet meadow reflecting on God's goodness — he was inside the deepest devastation a human being can endure. And it was there, in the depths of that grief, in what must have felt like the silence of God, that he found this. The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases.

Think carefully about what that means. It was not optimism that held Jeremiah together. He did not wake up one morning deciding to look on the bright side. What held him was the faithfulness of God — unshaken, unwavering, real — when everything around him had crumbled. When everything fails — and sometimes everything really does fail — God's love remains as an anchor. Not as a feeling. As an anchor. Deep, fixed, unmovable.

And God's compassion — hear this — is not a finite resource. It does not wear thin over time. It does not run dry because of our failures, our repeated falls, the familiar places we keep returning to in weakness. Christ, in whom all of God's compassion was fully and definitively revealed, is interceding for us right now. This moment. As you listen to this.

But there is one line in this verse that changes everything about today. They are new every morning. Each dawn, God does not recycle yesterday's mercies. He renews them. The sun that rose this morning carried grace you have never yet experienced. He is not giving you leftovers. He is giving you fresh mercy, new mercy, mercy that has your name on it and today's date. No morning arrives empty.

And then Jeremiah makes the most honest confession in the entire passage. He does not say, "great is my faith." He says: great is your faithfulness. He knows it was not the strength of his believing that kept him standing in the rubble. It was the unchanging character of God — immovable, faithful, revealed once and for all in Jesus Christ — which does not depend on how much faith you feel today. Your security does not rest in you. It rests in Him.

So here is what I want you to do — and I mean really do it, not just let it pass. Before breakfast, before your phone, before anything else, sit down, open your hands in your lap — open hands, the posture of someone who is ready to receive — and say out loud: "Thank You, Lord, for the new mercies of this day." Out loud. Not just in your mind. Because your voice declares what your heart needs to hear. And that one declaration of gratitude opens you to receive what God has already prepared for this day.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.