“Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.” – Song of Solomon 6:4
Oh how beautiful our God is. Great and mighty, tender and sweet. He is love itself. He is gracious and kind, yet He is also terrible in power, authority, and judgment. He is a God over angel armies. He is a just judge enacting sentences for sin. Yet over all that He does and/or allows to be done, His banner is love.
“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” – Song of Solomon 2:4
God does nothing that isn’t rooted in love. His grace and mercies are rooted in love for all. His judgments and wrath are rooted in love for the faithful. His corrections and even His stepping back and allowing the enemy to shake us is rooted in love for the straying unto repentance.
God is a good father and thus exhibits all the characteristics of a good Father. Love, kindness, grace, mercy, correction, wrath, direction, lessons; and once raised up and instructed in truth He lets you choose to trust His wisdom and obey what He has taught you or trust in your own wisdom, or that of those around you. If you choose the latter, He will step back and let you walk out the consequences of that decision in the loving hope that you might (through the consequences) see the folly of it.
In the end everything He does, doesn’t do, or allows to be done is rooted on love. This is why you can know those that are rooted in Him by their fruit. If someone is truly connected to the root of love they will produce the fruit of love, for God is love and so are His true children. Therefore, if one does not show forth the continual fruit of love, then they are not connected to the root of love. No matter what they say, or imagine, the fruits do not lie. God is love, and so are His children.
“For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.” – Romans 11:16
“For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.” – Romans 11:21-22
“And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” – 1 John 2:3-11
Daily Manna 