Beginning to love God starts with letting God love you.
When we allow God’s love to sink into our very being, to love us the way HE loves us, it transforms us and it transforms our relationships. Afterall, God is love and we tend to emulate the people that love us. Look at John (one of the Sons of Thunder as Jesus described them) who during the time of living and walking with Jesus, went from being a Son of Thunder, wanting to sit at the right or left of His throne, to confidently leaning back on Jesus shoulder at the last supper. He had experienced the love of Jesus and described himself as “the one whom Jesus loved.” John’s later writings emphasise love and the way of love, his life was totally transformed by allowing Jesus to love him.
He writes in 1 John 4:15-16,19
“If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so, we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them…We love because he first loved us
We need to start by letting God love us.
Getting to that point where we know and rely on Gods love for us is exactly what the apostle Paul prayed for the believers in Ephesians…
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:17b-19)
The goal: To know the Love of God
How does the bible describe God’s love?
- God by His nature is love and draws us into a love relationship with Him
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:8-10)
- Nothing can separate you from this love
“For 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.” (Rom 8:38-39)
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” Is 54:10
- The quality of His love is abounding, faithful and everlasting
“You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.” (Psalm 86:5)
“For the Lord is good and his love endures for ever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” (Psalm 100:5)
“The Lord appeared to us in the past,saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” (Jer 31:3)
- He knows and understands you
“But whoever loves God is known by God.” (1 Cor 8:3)
“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.” (Psalm 139:1-4)
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-15)
- In His love for you, He makes you a new person
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17)
- You belong to Him
“Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.’” (John 8:47
“If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Rom 14:8)
Notice that not one of these characteristics of God’s love towards us, depends on us, but instead, how He loves us is based on His character, not ours. If that is what the bible describes God’s love is like, why does it not infiltrate our hearts and minds and impact the way we live our lives? God declares His love has certain characteristics, let us allow Him to love us like that.
Often we cannot let God love us like this because…
It is hard to believe in God’s love for us because all we know is the imperfect human love we have received and experience in life so far. It may all seem too good to be true. So as a result, we have a hard time thinking God can love unconditionally, treat us with grace, not hold grudges, or view us with love when we’re unlovely. God’s love can feel foreign because we never experienced anything like it: a love so free and gracious.
We can struggle with His love when we still carry the scars of past pain and experiences. We may not have had good models for authority figures in our lives and we assume that God is the same way. Past pain can leave us broken and in our brokenness, we find it hard to find healing as our thoughts and emotions are clouded by the pain.
Sometimes it is hard to experience God’s love because we find it conditional on our performance, our circumstances and our sense of personal well-being. If any of these are not up to our standard, we assume a loss of love when in fact His love is unchanging and always directed towards us unconditionally. But our own feelings about ourselves cloud our experience of His love.
Sometimes we find it hard to experience the love of God because the god we have crafted in our minds in not based on what the bible says about God. But instead, we have shaped an understanding of what God is like, based on influences, our experiences and our thoughts, making an idol of God and trusting what is very far from the true God who loves us.
It all boils down to letting God love us exactly as the bible tells us He loves us.
I love how John knew and relied on the love of Jesus in his life, and this reliance of this love, changed his life. He named himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Would you describe yourself as someone who lives with the knowledge that they are deeply loved?- What would our lives be like, how would it translate into what we think, act and say, if we named ourselves “the one who Jesus loves?”
- What causes you to not allow Jesus to love you in the way that He wants to love you according to the bible?
Thank you for your love Lord, I confess that I am a child that is loved by God. I confess that I live my life like a beloved child of God. Lord, may the understanding and knowledge of your love, permeate my soul so that I know within my inner being that I am loved by You and that Your love is always focused on me. Help me to remember that your love is characterised by Your nature and not mine.
Truly wonderful to be reminded of the magnitude of Gods love for me a sinner. I am saved by His grace