3 minute read
Nothing is more important for us than understanding, considering, and receiving God’s love for us.
Nothing.
So, in that spirit… I encourage you to block out a little time today…
Get alone…
Grab yourself a cup of coffee—or your favorite warm, snuggly beverage…
And soak in each of these truths about God’s love for you.
(And, if you’re up for it, maybe even speak them out loud over yourself.)
Take your time… and let each one slowly sink down into your heart so it can have its intended effect.
1. God delights in me.
God loves me in the same way a thrilled parent loves and delights in their newborn child.
The LORD your God is with you! He is mighty to save! He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with a song.
-Zephaniah 3:17
2. Nothing can separate me from God’s love for me.
Awful things may happen to me. I may even do awful things. But the fact remains: God’s love never changes one iota for me. His love is constant.
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-Romans 8:38-39
3. I was loved first.
Long before I ever even thought about loving God or following Him, He loved me. He initiated this love relationship He wants to have with me. He loved me first.
We love because He first loved us.
-1 John 4:19
4. I am loved with an everlasting love.
God’s love for me never quits. It’s not temporary. It will go on for infinity.
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords. His love endures forever.
-Psalm 136:1-3
5. God lavishes (showers, heaps, floods) His love on me.
God’s love for me isn’t measure out in teaspoons. It’s measured out to me in giant heaps, so large I can’t see the top of it.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!
-1 John 3:1
6. God’s love will drive me toward living a better life.
The more I’m focused on God’s love for me, the more I’ll obey and follow Him—because I’ll trust Him more.
Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all…
2 Corinthians 5:14
7. God’s love drives out every fear.
The opposite of love isn’t hatred. The opposite of love is fear. One of the most powerful effects of God’s love in my life is the way being loved by the Creator of the Universe drives away my fear.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18
8. I experience more of God’s love when I’m loving others and being loved by them.
God’s love doesn’t just come to me when I’m alone. It comes to me—even more—when I’m living in community with other people, loving them and receiving love from them.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God’s lives in us and His love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:12
9. The love of God is meant to be the foundation of my life.
I’m tempted to build my life on so many other foundations—my efforts, how life seems to be going, what other people think of me. But the best, strongest, truest foundation for my life is the love of God for me.
I pray that you would be rooted and established in love… and grasp how wide and love and high and deep is the love of Christ.
Ephesians 3:17-18
10. If I’m ever questioning God’s love for me, I only have to consider His sacrifice on the cross made for me.
I can’t always look to the circumstances of my life to get a sense of God’s love for me. The most constant, fullest, largest expression of God’s love for me is the sacrifice Jesus made for me—to remove my sins and make me a child of God.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
-John 15:13
God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
-Romans 5:8
*****
May you receive God’s love for you today—His extravagant, wild, immutable, constant, indescribable love for you today.
And may you spend your day thinking of yourself the way Jesus’ disciple John referred to Himself: the one whom Jesus loves.
BONUS: Take a listen to this great old song by Rich Mullins called, “The Love of God” wherein he describes God’s love as a “reckless, raging fury.”