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- ❤️ First Love Weekly #33: God Is Love
❤️ First Love Weekly #33: God Is Love
Weekly post about God in the daily with encouragements from the Word
Jae Leeholland
July 27, 2025
On July 12, 2025, we welcomed our baby boy John Jae-Yong Leeholland into this world.
Little does he know that he has been covered in prayers and promises of the Word even before he was conceived.
Named after John the Baptist, who called on the people of God to “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 3:2), may our boy be filled with the Holy Spirit— rooted in nothing but the Word— and grow to glorify God in his walk, bring the lost home as Jesus did, and prepare the way of the Lord with the fervent spirit of Elijah.
If in any way they can be encouraging to you, here are a few verses the Lord had imprinted on our hearts to encourage us to pray when all hope seemed lost with only a glimmer of light to be seen:
“Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.”
“Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.”
But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Amen and AMEN! Hallelujah, praise the Lord Almighty!!
To hold our boy John in our arms now is a vivid reminder of God’s great love for us— our answered prayer. I look into his eyes and wonder if the love I have for him reflects even a fraction of the love Jesus has for us.
Love is more than a feeling. It’s something we receive, have, and are able to give— as tangible and real as this child who lives and breathes.
Samuel the seer on his farewell address told the Israelites, “For consider what great things He has done for you” (1 Sam. 12:24). When we look around, isn’t it true that we can find evidence and traces of His love and goodness in our lives?
I want to leave you today with a passage the Lord’s ringing in my heart the past couple of weeks. I believe it’s one of the most beautiful embodiments and depictions of what love is.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
I pray these truths over you, and that you’d have the time to relish and thrive in the love God has for you— above all else.
With love,
Jae
P.S. These are songs that randomly played in sequence moments before John was born after 52 hours of labor(!!)— as the sun began shining through a cloudy, peaceful Saturday morning here in Los Angeles.
Doesn’t God have the best sense of humor? Even the nurse laughed and asked if we’d curated them!
“I've got sunshine on a cloudy day” - hilarious!
“You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Revelation 2:3-5)
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