Believing in God's love for you

In the age of "unfriending" and "ghosting," divisiveness and polarizing, it is more crucial than ever that we be grounded in God's personal love for us.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of comparing God's love for us to people's love for us.

God's love is unlike human love in every possible, imaginable way.  The love we give and receive from others is but a taste, a tiny glimpse, of God's vast love for us.  They really cannot be compared at all, if we are honest with ourselves.

People can be very fickle.  People change.  People have issues of their own that they are either dealing with or in denial of.  People can be looking more to get love than to give love.  Most wait to give love until they get it from another first.  It is the rare person who gives love freely without expectation.

That is exactly how God loves us.  We love because He first loved us (see I John 4:19).

While the world seems to be spinning out of control, resulting in a sort of global sense of insecurity, Christians know that God is ever and always in control.  That is of great comfort to those of us who know the Lord.

The other inexhaustible source of our comfort is the Lord Himself.  To be loved is to be comforted.  To rest secure in an unchanging, ever-present, high, wide, and very deep love is the key to spiritual well-being, not to mention emotional and mental health.

So many are clamoring and searching for that perfect love in their lives.  But the only perfect love is God's love for us.  

When others fail us, fall short, or simply cannot love us as we need, we must not project that kind of love onto God as if He loves in the same, imperfect way.  God's love is perfect.  

Perhaps your sins have caused you to feel like you have gone too far and therefore you do not feel worthy of God's love. Join the club!  We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  

That is the beauty and wonder of God's love.  Unlike human love, He loves us not for who we are, what we have to offer, or what we have done or not done, but He loves us because it is His very nature to love.  God cannot not love!

Even when He brings judgment to the nations, chastises His people for rebellion, it is all done from His heart of love.  Everything He does, He does in love.  

So when we open ourselves up to receive the love of God, it changes everything.  It empowers us to love others better.  It frees us to be who He made us to be.  It heals us.  It changes us.

Who wouldn't want that kind of love?!

Yes, He can show us His love through people.  But if you have ever experienced His warm, loving Presence in a worship service, it is from God directly and it is unlike any other love.

He loves us because He loves us.  Then, as we receive that great love, we do not hoard it all for ourselves.  We extend it toward others.  We can even love our enemies, those who mistreat us, with the love of God in our hearts.  We "let it out," so to speak.  That is the ideal - when His love is so powerful in us that it overflows outward to the world.  

As we head toward the winding down of this world, in great anticipation of the next world God is preparing for us, we need this kind of love in order to face it all.  

Let us not grow weary of loving others, nor let our love grow cold, as the Bible warns us is going to happen in the end times.  

How to fan the flame of this love?  Spend a lot of time with God.  Open His Word and let it wash over you.  Sing praises to Him.  Forgive others.  Quickly.  Keep looking up and try to keep your gaze on Him throughout the day, in your heart.  Rest in Him.  Trust Him with everything and everyone that concerns you.  Try to see Him as He truly is:  on the Throne reigning in Supreme Majesty, His love flowing out from Him.

These are spiritual practices that will carry us through these dark times.  We are not to bury our heads in the sand and deny the evil rampant in our world.  But neither are we to focus on it and allow it to disrupt our union with God and His love.

Believe in God's love for you.  Receive God's love for you.  Then spread it to all around you - not only those you "like," but to those whom you maybe are not so fond of.  God's love is all-pervasive.  May it be so in our hearts!

Oh Lord.  It is hard to put Your kind of love into words, so unearthly is it.  But it is real; more real than any other love.  Oh help us to fully believe in and receive Your wonderful love, Lord Jesus.  Help us be found in Your love.  Help us give love to others out of Your love.  For love truly is the answer, both now and forevermore.  In Jesus' Name.  Amen.