Livin Lively

By Peggy Lively

            My husband and I decided to join in on one of the latest exercise crazes, the P90X extreme home fitness program. The exercise videos target different muscle groups each day, and involves a lot of repetitive lifting of hand held weights. Instead of weights, however, you can use resistant bands when doing these exercises.

            These bands resist any movement away from their original source, so they pull back on the muscles as you try to move away. It is the repetitive working against this force that tones the muscles you are using.

            I read Hosea 11:4, I immediately thought about these resistance bands. It says, “I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them.”

            God’s love is like these bands. It resists any movement away from Him and gently pulls us back to Him when we begin to move away. His love is a perfect, unconditional and irresistible love. Nothing can separate us from it: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 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.” (Romans 8:35-39)

            I often wonder, does my love reflect His? I know that most of the time it does not. But if I abide in His love, my love should begin to look more and more like His. Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) As His love draws us closer to Him, our love should also gently pull others, not closer to us, but closer to our Savior. “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (I John 4:10, NLT) Share this real love with someone today.

            Don’t resist God’s bands of love; let them draw you closer to Him. Then by living and responding in His love, draw others closer to Him as well.