Welcome to the new Tirzah devotional series, Words to the Wise. My name is Ozi (“cozy”) Ojukwu, and Lord willing, I will write devotionals for you all. I hope to help you spend time with God each day. The idea for writing devotionals came to me from various experiences in my life, including reading devotional books growing up and taking a women’s ministry minor at my alma mater. There, I learned to write different materials for women, including a blog, small group questions, a message and a Bible study. For this first series, we’ll be exploring the love of God, which J.I. Packer defines as “a spontaneous determination of God’s whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed.” (Chapter 12 of Knowing God, p. 121). In other words, of His own will, God demonstrates determined kindness (well-wishing) and helpfulness towards us;

Especially if you’ve grown up in a Christian home and environment, the love of God can easily become a cliche. We know John 3:16, one of the most famous verses. We can recite the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection effortlessly. We think that love and grace are the same thing (they’re not, although they are related). Sometimes, if you’re not careful, you might even think that the God of the Old Testament is an angry, violent god, whereas the God of the New Testament is a kind, loving, “soft” god. Thankfully, as this devotional series will show, this is not true. My goal in this series is to get you to view the love of God in a way that you perhaps haven’t viewed it before. From the beginnings of the Old Testament to the end of the New, the love of God is a consistent thread in the tapestry of the Scriptures; this is what I want you to understand. 

Once a week for approximately four months, we’ll take a look at the love of God from selected passages in the Old and New Testaments, going in the order represented in most standardized texts (that is, Genesis to Revelation). In these devotionals, I’ll connect the theme to something personal (for example, a song or other form of popular media) before doing some basic exegesis to show how the passage exemplifies the love of God. Finally, I’ll close out with three open-ended discussion questions in the following format: 

1) How does this passage change/affirm/etc, your view about God?

2) How does knowing more about the love of God make you feel? 

3) How will you apply this facet of the love of God into your life? 

I’m excited to get started on this series with you, and I hope you enjoy it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ozi Ojukwu is a girl wildly in love with Jesus. A recent graduate of Cedarville University, she is a Colson-Fellow-In Training, learning about the fundamentals of a Christian worldview and how it connects to all of public life. She recently completed an internship at the Borgen Project, a nonprofit that makes global poverty a focus of US foreign policy. A bookworm to the core, she loves reading both historical fiction and memoirs. Her favorite verse is Romans 1:16.