• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Lauren Gaskill

Encouraging women to live in faith and joy

  • Home
  • About
    • Privacy Policy
  • Book
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Podcast
    • Episodes
  • Speaking
    • Events

His Love Is Deep

December 3, 2018 • 1 Comment

My husband and I walked hand in hand, away from the shoreline and down Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina, my eyes growing wider with every step we took. The meteorologist on the morning news had warned us that Hurricane Michael was quickly approaching the Outer Banks islands, and the winds had picked up to at least 30 miles per hour.

I squeezed my man’s hand and leaned in close as the pier’s wind turbines whipped and squeaked at rapid intervals above our heads. To my left and right, the waves raged and swirled whitecaps at every angle, creating along with the wind a symphony of chaos and sound. Come midnight, Michael would hit the pier with all of its force and fury, about a month after Florence had threatened to take the islands out.

We reached the end of the pier and I stopped and stared out into the distance, marveling at the magnitude and beauty of the Atlantic stretched out before me.

How wide, how long, how high, and how deep my love is for you, daughter.

The wind and waves should have drowned out any other sound from making its way into my brain, but these words echoed crisply in my mind.

Yes, His love is stronger, wider, longer, higher and deeper than any pier, ocean or hurricane.

God’s Love Will Carry Us

I’ve spent a great deal of my life caught in what I like to call the undertow of doubt, fear and despair. When the waves of chronic pain, depression and anxiety came crashing over my head, I didn’t know how to overcome them, and so I closed myself off from receiving God’s love and believing things would get better. I heard people say His love was strong enough to save me, but after years of battling the same issues and seeing little to no progress, I had hardened my heart to the truth.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when God’s love finally broke through my incomprehension. It’s not as if I woke up one morning and instantly felt God’s love. Instead, much like my unraveling, recognizing and accepting God’s love was a process.

The more I prayed for God to reveal and help me feel His love, the more He showed up in the most amazing ways to woo me back to Him.

There’s not enough space here for me to tell you the many ways God’s love has carried me through the high sea battles I’ve faced over the years, but I will tell you this: the depths of His great love saved and continue to save me from sinking into the undertow of doubt, fear and despair every single day.

I don’t know what high sea battles you are facing today, but I do know that His love can and will carry you too. All it takes is a little courage and a tiny seed of faith that’s willing to say, “OK, God, I can’t face this storm alone, but I’m trusting You and Your love to carry me through to the other side.”

May we all have the power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ today and every day (Ephesians 3:18). And may we declare, right here and now, that the only thing we are going to drown in in this life is God’s deep love — not the deep waters that surround us.

Say it with me: Jesus, I need your love. 

Want to learn more about God’s deep love and go deeper in your faith? Read my new book, Into the Deep: Diving into a Life of Courageous Faith.

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

You May Also Like

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Calvonia Radford says

    December 3, 2018 at 11:47 am

    “Instead, much like my unraveling, recognizing and accepting God’s love was a process.” It is indeed a process. The more we seek him in the midst of the turmoil the greater we know him and how trustworthy he is. He really does want to give us peace that is beyond comprehension yet he lets us discover that peace in our own time. Great post!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, dear friend! I'm so glad you're here. And though I wish we could be meeting face-to-face over coffee, I'm grateful for the chance to know you here. The community here inspires me, and I hope you feel like you belong while you're here. If you'd like to connect with me, please follow me on social media. I want to hear from you, so please reach out! And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter — you'll get access to special content and freebies.

Connect With Me

Subscribe for Weekly Inspirational Updates!

Into the Deep Book

Order Today!

Categories


Introducing our sweet baby boy, Graham Gregg Gaski Introducing our sweet baby boy, Graham Gregg Gaskill! 

Our precious son made his long awaited arrival into this world 4/8/21 at 12:27 pm weighing in at 9 lbs. 5 oz. 

His name means gift of God, symbol of healing, watchful and wide awake, and valorous.

Graham: gift of God in some cultures, but it also can mean “grain,” and is representative of the new grain we’ve all been given access to — Jesus’ body broken for our healing. Gregg is after Alex’s dad and means wide-awake, watchful and vigilant. Gaskill: valorous. 

All I can say are the first words I uttered when I had the beautiful opportunity to catch him and pull him to my chest: He’s perfect. 

We are blessed. 🌈
Waves. They come and they go; they push and they p Waves. They come and they go; they push and they pull. All the while, the tides rise and fall, drawn by forces unseen.

Forces unseen ... It’s amazing to me that the same world that so easily acknowledges the unseen, powerful forces behind the ocean’s activity is often skeptical or unreceptive to the unseen, powerful forces behind the supernatural realm. 

And yet, if there is one thing I’ve learned in my journey of learning the things of the unseen Kingdom of God, it’s that what Paul communicated in 2 Corinthians 4:18 is true: What is unseen is eternal — greater and more real than what is seen. And the circumstances, emotions, and things we experience here? Well, they are temporary.

Your situation might not look like it’s changing, but I promise you as you focus on the things unseen God has showed you and promised you about your life, like the falling and rising of the tides, the power of the Holy Spirit is bringing the substance of those things unseen to pass right in front of your eyes. 

Seek, ask, believe, receive, and keep your eyes on Jesus, sweet friend. He’s not going to let you down. 

📷 @kate.mclaws
“I look up to the mountains and hills, longing f “I look up to the mountains and hills, longing for God’s help. But then I realize that our true help and protection is only from the Lord, our Creator who made the heavens and the earth. He will guard and guide me, never letting me stumble or fall. God is my keeper; he will never forget nor ignore me. He will never slumber nor sleep; he is the Guardian-God for his people, Israel. Yahweh himself will watch over you; he’s always at your side to shelter you safely in his presence. He’s protecting you from all danger both day and night. He will keep you from every form of evil or calamity as he continuously watches over you. You will be guarded by God himself. You will be safe when you leave your home, and safely you will return. He will protect you now, and he’ll protect you forevermore!” {Psalm 121 TPT} 

This is just one of so many sections of Scripture I’ve been declaring over our family in this season. What about you?
Isaiah 59 struck me in a new and powerful way this Isaiah 59 struck me in a new and powerful way this week. In verses 15,-16, the prophet writes, “Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him That there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, And wondered that there was no intercessor; Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.“

The passage goes on to say that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord lifts up a standard against Him. Yes, He always breaks through for us. And because He sent us salvation through Jesus when He saw the depth of our need for a Savior, we now carry that same spirit and person of breakthrough inside of us. 

More than ever, I am convinced that the breakthroughs we find ourselves needing in this journey called life are not somewhere “out there” waiting for us. Instead, Jesus is waiting for us to turn to Him, acknowledge every good thing He’s already placed in us, and rest in knowing that as we stand on His Word, He is bringing every promise to complete fulfillment in our lives. 

Drop a 🙌🏼 in the comments if you’re thankful the God of breakthrough lives inside of you today!
Sleepy boop 🐶 @boopmynose Sleepy boop 🐶 @boopmynose
Everything is starting to come back to life here i Everything is starting to come back to life here in Raleigh. The birds are singing. The trees, flowers, and bushes are budding — some even flowering. It’s amid this flurry of new life that I find my heart longing to awaken to an even deeper revelation of the truth of the new life that is living on the inside of me every day. I have tasted and seen bits and pieces of the goodness of this new life, but it’s not enough to simply know it exists. I want the new life that Jesus has given me to radiate from every part of my being. Not just my spirit, but my soul and body too. 

My hope is found in remembering that it is GOD who causes seeds to grow and bloom, both in the landscape of our world and in the garden of my heart. I yield my heart to Him and the truth of His Word, and He brings the increase by His grace. I cannot make the seed of His Word and new life grow. I can water it through communion with Jesus, but I can’t make it produce life in my own strength or by my own power of will.

This is what I hold onto in faith: That I don’t have to understand how He turns the winter into spring. But just the promise that He does. Even when spring seems like it has been delayed. It always comes. 🌿
I call this my “I love the Word of God speaking I call this my “I love the Word of God speaking face.” 😂😂 Hard to believe it’s officially been a little more than a year since I stepped onto a stage to minister the word of God. I’m so grateful for the many other opportunities God has given me to share the Word in this season of life, whether that be through a conversation at the gym, an interview, or a @shefoundjoy podcast episode, but goodness, am I looking forward to the day when I can share the love, goodness, truth, and power of Jesus to a room full of precious, smiling people. 

If your church is opened/opening up, please know I’m open to speaking opportunities, even after sweet Baby G is born! Message or email me for inquiries or booking info. (Thanks again to @rochelle.merrell for allowing me to speak at @catchthefireraleigh’s women’s event last year! We had such a blast!! And @_j_knee, that was when we became friends!!) 💜
If there is one thing pregnancy and preparing for If there is one thing pregnancy and preparing for birth have taught me, it’s that Jesus really does have to be my source for everything, and I wasn’t meant to carry burdens. (I’m sure motherhood teaches this on an even deeper level.) But really, we all need Jesus. And we weren’t meant to carry burdens. We were meant to carry LIFE. 

Whether or not you ever carry a child, your inheritance is to be a carrier of the light and life of Jesus for all of your days. That means saying no to holding on to negative emotions, memories, thoughts, or anything else the enemy of our souls wants to try and make us carry. 

With Baby G making his arrival any day now, I’ll be honest: The last few weeks have been brutal. Holy Spirit has been bringing a lot of things to the surface, and some days, all I can do is just cry, surrender, and choose to trust all over again that God will settle what still needs to be settled and be faithful to what He’s spoken over our family. But through this grueling process, I have learned in a greater way why it is so important to cast every burden and care on Jesus. Because if we don’t, the very weight of them will eventually crush us. 

What cares or burdens do you need to cast upon Him today? He is more than willing and able to carry the weight, and in exchange, fill you with His light and life.
BACK TO TOP HomeContactSubscribeEvents
© Lauren Gaskill
Designed by Cocoa Creative
Developed by Earl Grey Creative
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.