#ThursdayThoughts with Tessa Afshar

Good Morning!

We arrived home late last night from Alaska so you still may not hear too much from me until I recover and catch up after 10 full days with little/no computer access LOL!

No worries though, I've got a very special guest today.... Tyndale author Tessa Afshar shares some thoughts and her new release with us.

Welcome Tesa!

Love Never Fails

If you have ever attended a wedding in a church, chances are you have heard someone read 1 Corinthians 13. It is such a familiar passage that we sometimes forget to listen to it. But the words in that passage are remarkable. At the end of the section, Paul makes the most extraordinary claim of all: “Love never fails” 1 Corinthians 13: 8 (NIV).
     But those of us who have been touched by the wounds of wrecked relationships, strained marriages, broken friendships, divorce, and repeated disappointments have had a different experience. Love does fail. In spectacular, heart-wrenching ways. What are we to do with this discrepancy?
     This is the lesson that Ariadne, my new heroine in Thief of Corinth, has to learn. Ariadne lives in first century Corinth. After the wreckage of her parents’ divorce, she is very aware that other people’s love fails. By the end of the book, she becomes aware that her own love has failed as well. In the process of this transformation, of recognizing her own fractured love rather than focusing on how other people have failed her, she comes face to face with her need for God. She learns an important lesson.
     God covers our gaps.
     In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul prays something striking. He prays that the followers of Christ may have power “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18-19).
     He prays for believers to have supernatural power, the Spirit’s power, in order to grasp the love of Christ. In other words, we need supernatural help from the Holy Spirit to receive love and hold on to it. Need the Spirit’s power merely to experience love. The kind of love God wants us to taste requires a move of God.
     The flesh that has never tasted such a love in this world is incapable of grasping it. We cannot live like beloved sons and daughters because we don’t know what the Father’s perfect love, offered to us through Christ, really feels like.
     But in Christ, we can learn to experience boundless love. And to give it.
     We will still fail to love perfectly. But like Ariadne, we learn two lessons: clinging to Jesus will mean we fail less often, and when we do, God’s perfect love covers our failures.
    One of the first things I learned about my husband was that he was an early morning person. By 9 PM his eyelids started growing heavy. While we were dating, I noticed a sweet tendency in him. He hated to say goodbye. Even though it was long past his bedtime, he would linger for one more word. One more minute with me. We didn’t spend the extra time on any life-shattering discussions or important chores. We merely enjoyed one another’s presence.
    He was willing to pay the price of sleeplessness, exhaustion, and mounting tasks left undone, just so he could be with me a little while longer. Now that I know him better, I realize how much those late nights cost him and am amazed by the sacrifice. It remains one of the sweetest memories of our courtship.
     I have come to realize that we need to linger with Jesus in the same way. To pay the price of staying with Him just a bit longer. Linger to enjoy one more moment with Him. To grasp how wide and long and high and deep His love really goes. His love never fails.

What a lovely thing Tesa....certainly some thoughts for us to ponder today. Thanks for sharing!

Tessa Afshar is the award-winning author of Bread of Angels, Land of Silence, and several other historical novels. Land of Silence won an Inspy Award in the general fiction category and was voted by Library Journal as one of the top five Christian fiction titles of 2016. Harvest of Gold won the prestigious Christy Award in the historical romance category, and Harvest of Rubies was a finalist for the 2013 ECPA Christian Book Award for fiction. In 2011, after publishing her first novel, Pearl in the Sand, Tessa was named New Author of the Year by the FamilyFiction-sponsored Reader's Choice Awards.
     Tessa was born in Iran and lived there for the first fourteen years of her life. She then moved to England, where she survived boarding school for girls and fell in love with Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, before moving to the United States permanently. Her conversion to Christianity in her twenties changed the course of her life forever. Tessa holds an MDiv from Yale Divinity School, where she served as co-chair of the Evangelical Fellowship. She serves part-time on the staff of one of the oldest churches in America. But that has not cured her from being exceptionally fond of chocolate. Visit her online at www.tessaafshar.com. Her newest release, Thief of Corinth can be found at Tyndale and at Amazon.

Hope you enjoyed today's post and that you'll check back regularly for Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlight.

Until next time take care and God bless.
PamT