Week 31: July 27-August 2, 2025 - God Loves His People!
This week’s daily readings:
July 2- August 2, 2025
This week’s devotional:
God Loves His People!
by Sue Hersey
Scripture:
I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.
— Ezekiel 37:26-27 (NIV)
Reflection:
A few years ago, I read a book called “The 5 Love Languages” by a Christian author, counselor, and pastor named Gary Chapman. Through his experience counseling couples, Chapman had developed the concept that everyone has a preferred way of showing and receiving love. He calls these “languages” because that is what really speaks to people’s hearts and meets their emotional needs. The 5 languages are words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, and receiving gifts. Understanding your own personal love language plus your partner’s helps both parties feel truly loved and strengthens the relationship. If you’d like to know more, I urge all Christians to read that book sometime.
What I see here, in this passage from Ezekiel, is a God who deeply loves his people and is endeavoring to use each of these ways to communicate that love to them (maybe with the exception of physical touch). This is how I see God using the other 4 out of 5 love languages within the Scripture quoted above:
Words of Affirmation – God sends this positive message, his actual words, through the prophet Ezekiel. He’s promising his people that he loves them and backs it up with his verbal commitment to their welfare.
Quality Time – He vows to put his dwelling place right there among his people, showing a desire to live among them, be close to them, and share in their lives for eternity. That’s a real commitment of time!
Acts of Service – God’s promise to establish his people and to increase their numbers sounds like a service to me. He wants to serve them as their God but also expects them to serve him as his people. It should go both ways.
Receiving Gifts – What more can we receive from a loved one than the gift of peace? What better way to spend eternity than in harmony with one another, free from worry, and with the assurance of God’s abiding love?!
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, as it says in 1 John 4:16, you are love! Reading your word is such a blessing to me because it constantly assures me that you do love me and intend our relationship to be everlasting. I’m so grateful that you’ve made a home for your Holy Spirit within me. I pray that you’ll keep sending me these reassurances everywhere I turn in the Bible. Thank you for your eternal presence and the peace you have given me through your loving Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray. Amen