The Pursuit of Love and Happiness

Everyone longs to be loved, and, if you're like me, you can find yourself frustrated with failed relationships that don't really deliver the kind of dream you hoped for. I've been through rejection and divorce and it can make a person feel pretty unloveable and hopeless, wondering if God even still cares, why He would let me go through this. But, He didn't forget about me. He has been pursuing me, bringing me back to Him and He can do the same for you.

As a Christian, I can look at God's Word and see what he has to say and His view brings a ton of hope. He says we are valuable, precious, loved, that He wants to heal the brokenhearted, that He has plans of hope for us and that He can bring something good from even rejection and loss. He even understands because He's been through it.

We are valuable

• "For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." (Ephesians 2:10 NLT)
• "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it." (Psalm 139:13-14)

We can be healed

• "He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds." (Psalm 147:3 NLT)
• "I will give you back your health and heal your wounds, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 30:17 NLT)

Christ has been there, too

• "He (Christ) was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief." (Isaiah 53:3a NLT)
• "The stone that the builders rejected (Christ) has now become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see." (Psalm 118:22-23)
• "Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested." (Hebrews 2:18)

God can bring good out of this

• "And we know that God causes everything to work together^m]"> for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them" (Romans 8:28 NLT)
• "When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." (James 1:2-4 NLT)
• "For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11)

We are loved

• “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." (John 3;16)
• "Cast all your worries and cares on Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7 NLT)
• "Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. ² This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! ³ So Jesus told them this story: ⁴ “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?" (Luke 15:1-4)

How to let God help you

God really does want to help me and you, but it's easy to get in His way and cause ourselves needless hurt. It was easy for me to get angry at God and angry at other people, and anger is a natural emotion, but dwelling on it for a long time was doing nothing but causing me more grief. God, on the other hand, longs for us to turn to Him and seek His help.

The things that you and I have done that are wrong separate us from God. (See Isaiah 59:2) There is hope now because Christ came to this earth and He died on the cross to pay for every wrong thing I did and every wrong thing you and every other human did (See Isaiah 53:5-6). Now we can be close to God and forgiven. We accept God’s gift of forgiveness simply by placing our faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of our wrongdoings (See Ephesians 2:8-9). Would you like to enter a relationship with your Creator by trusting in Christ as your Savior? If so, here’s a simple prayer you can use to express your faith:

Dear God,
I know that my sin has put a barrier between You and me. Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to die in my place. I trust in Jesus alone to forgive my sins, and I accept His gift of eternal life. I ask Jesus to be my personal Savior and the Lord of my life. Thank You. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Once you've accepted Christ's free gift, you have a relationship with Him and with God. There's a lot you can do to help yourself grow and heal. When we pray, read the Bible, thank God and try to do what He says, we help God help us.

If you accepted Christ and want to talk more about this, please feel free to contact me at melissa6980@gmail.com