THE BEAUTY OF GOD'S LOVE

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
​C. S. Lewis

​There are three core truths about God that are critical to our freedom. The first is that God is good. The second that God is loving. And finally, that God is in control. All three of these truths are intertwined, and without one the others fall short. If God is good, he must also, therefore, be loving. But if He is not in control, how can He really be good? And if He is not loving, He certainly cannot be good. 

Today I want to talk with you about the reality of God’s love.

I think for the most part we all have a general understanding of the fact that God is loving. We all know John 3:16, and we often tell each other “God loves you!” But the question I want to challenge you with today is this: How is the reality of God’s love impacting your daily living? 

While we may find ourselves familiar with the fact that God loves us, we may not necessarily have a full understanding of what that love looks like, which leads us to feeling, and subsequently living, as though God does not love us. The sad fact is that many of us struggle with looking at what’s happening in our lives and in our world and find ourselves wrestling with the question of God’s love. 
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THE CHALLENGE OF LOVE

To fully grasp the love of God, we need to take a step back and redefine love. The first problem we encounter when it comes to God’s love is that we have a misconception of what love is, what it looks like, and how it acts.

Scripture talks about three primary types of love: romantic/sexual love, brotherly/friendship love, and sacrificial love. The love that God has for us is sacrificial love – which, by the way, is the same love that He ultimately calls all us to strive to have for each other.

Part of our problem in defining love is that we resort to feelings over actions. We struggle to apply the truth of whether or not God loves us simply based on how we feel, rather than evaluating His love based on what actions He has taken towards us. 
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THE CHALLENGE OF PRIDE

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
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 4:7-10

​I have some really good news for you: God’s love is not based on you.

It’s so easy for us to begin to question God’s love when we look at ourselves. We see our struggle, we see our mess, we see our fear and doubt, and we begin to tell ourselves that God couldn’t possibly love us. But friends, God doesn’t love us because of who we are or what we do. God loves us because it’s who He is. It is His nature. He cannot help but love you.

Now, that love may look different from time to time. Sometimes His love means discipline that leads to repentance. Sometimes His love means trials that lead to growth. But many times, His love means acceptance and blessings, if we’ll just accept it.

It’s vital that we stop basing God’s love on our own deservedness. We will never deserve God’s love. That’s the beauty of it.  
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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
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But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--
it is by grace you have been saved.
Ephesians 2:4-5
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God didn’t wait for us to cry out to Him; He didn’t wait for us to clean up our act; He didn’t wait for us to deserve His love. Rather, in spite of and in the face of our utter rebellion against Him, He chose to love us by making the ultimate sacrifice of His own beloved son to suffer the most painful and humiliating death in our place to satisfy justice so that we could have an opportunity to be reconciled to Him, to enjoy a new life with Him, and to spend eternity with Him. 

LOVE, ACCEPTANCE, AND AFFECTION

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?
But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door;
it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Genesis 4:7
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We live in a culture that says if you love someone, you must accept them. If you don’t approve of every aspect of their lifestyle and choices, you are called unloving, hateful and many other inappropriate names. These same assumptions and subsequent accusations are frequently thrown at God, as well.

I’m sure you’ve heard it said, as I have, that because God is loving, He therefore accepts everyone. Oh, my friend, how I wish this were true. But it’s not. The very fact that God is loving is why He refuses to accept, approve of, and endorse sin in our lives and the lives of others. He loves us too much to let us think it is okay to act in ways that are destroying ourselves and others.

John 3:16 is absolutely true. God loves everyone deeply. There’s not one soul in the world that can escape His love. However, not every soul in the world is in a position to receive that love, affection, and acceptance.

Consider the famous “Prodigal Son.” When the son was away from his father, his father still loved him, prayed for him, waited and watched for him. But the son was far away – he could not receive that love. Yet, when he reached his breaking point, he immediately knew that his father loved him and he could go to his father, leaving his muddy mess, repenting of his rebellion, to receive it. So he did. And it was beautiful.

If we want to be accepted by God, we must recognize and repent of the sin we’ve been harboring in our lives so that we can be in a position to experience His loving affection and blessing.

For some reading this today, it may be that the true reason you are not experiencing God’s love the way you desire is that you are the Prodigal child who is far from God of your own volition. You’ve been running from God and running toward sin. The answer you seek, the acceptance you crave, will be found only in turning from your sin and pursuing a genuine relationship with God.
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LOVE, DISCIPLINE, AND SUFFERING

Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us
and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit
to the Father of spirits and live!
They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best;
but God disciplines us for our good,
​in order that we may share in his holiness.
Hebrews 12:9-10

Even after we begin a relationship with God, there are many times in our lives where we experience a disruption in the affection we crave simply because we’ve fallen for the lure of sin and have begun to drift from Christ. God will then begin to work in our lives through consequences to reveal our need for repentance and for Him.

​There are other times, though, where we’re doing the right things we know to do, but we still feel a disconnect in our relationship with God. Friend, let me assure you – this is normal. There is a natural flow to our relationship with God that includes hills and valleys, and not every valley is due to outright sin. Sometimes God uses distance and difficulties as a way of growing our faith by challenging us to be faithful when it doesn’t make sense or come easily. In those moments we can either choose to give up, doubt God’s love, and revert to self-indulgent behaviors to feel better, or we can choose to believe that God is good and God is loving even when we don’t feel it.

Ultimately, we must remember that God’s love is not an enabling love. His love moves Him to act in ways that are for our best good. We see it at the cross, where he sacrificed His beloved Son. We see it in His discipline, as He corrects and trains us to live in righteousness. And we see it in his affection as He graciously supplies with more than we ask or need. 
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THE GREATNESS OF GOD'S LOVE

For this reason I kneel before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you
with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
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.
Ephesians 3:14-19

Regardless of our feelings, God’s love is true. Even if all He did for us was provide atonement at the cross, that alone is enough to prove His love. But wonderfully, graciously, beautifully, He proves His love over and over again in our lives through things such as answers to prayer, encouragement from a friend, forgiveness from sin, grace to overcome, and faith to grow.

Nonetheless, all of us have days of struggle, when it’s harder to believe God’s love. What do we do then? We choose believe the truth, regardless of how we feel. 
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THE REALITY OF GOD'S LOVE

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:11-12

Therefore, there is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus,
Romans 8:1

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless in his sight.
In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship
through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--
to the praise of his glorious grace,
which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:4-6

The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Zephaniah 3:17

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish,
will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg,
will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Luke 11:11-13

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know
his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends,
for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
John 15:15

See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1a

“The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.”
Psalm 147:11
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These are just a few of the many passages in Scripture that assure us of God’s real and personal love for us. There are countless verses designed to encourage us and strengthen us in our confidence of God’s love, because He knows we will struggle to believe Him.

These passages reassure us that…

• GOD LOVES US NOW
  He didn’t love us then and not now. He doesn’t love some future version of us. He’s not waiting for us to get over this current struggle. He knows what we’re going through, He sees our mess. And He loves us.
  
  
• GOD LOVES US AFTER
  Even after we failed, which we do far more often that we’d like, God loves us. There is no sin beyond His love. He knows the things we’ve done, and He knows the things we’ve wanted to do. He saw it all, even the things no one else did. And He loves us.
  
  
• GOD LOVES US PERSONALLY
  ​God’s love is not some sort of universal love that is “for the world.” It’s personal. It’s for you. It’s for me. He calls us by name. He cares about the details of our lives. Because He loves us.

 

• GOD LIKES US
  More than just love, God likes us. He doesn’t cringe when we pray, He doesn’t “tolerate” us, He doesn’t “put up with” us, He doesn’t roll His eyes when we struggle. He delights in us. He takes joy in us. He wants to spend time with us. He calls us His friends. Because He loves us.
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LIVING LOVED

So when I feel that God can’t love me because I gave in to temptation, I can choose to remember Romans 8:1, which tells me that when I have repented of my sin, God has forgiven me and I am loved and accepted by Him.

When I feel disconnected, when I’m having an “off” day, and everything’s going wrong,  I can choose to believe Romans 8, which tells me that God is on my side; and if God is on my side, who can be against me? 

​When I struggle with guilt from a sin I’ve forsaken but am still reaping the consequences of, I can remember that the painful consequences of my choices are only the discipline and correction necessary to be free in the future. I can remember Hebrews 12, which reminds me that God disciplines us because of His love for us. Even if I don’t feel the affection of His love in the discipline, I know that after the correction I will, because His love did not disappear in the correction, it just took on a different role.
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REST IN THE TRUTH

So when you struggle to identify God’s love in your life, seek out the promises and assurances throughout the Word of God.

Write out the promises, and make them personal, including your own name in the passage.

Post the truth you need to believe around your home, your car, your office.

Take some time at the close of each day to consider how you’ve seen and experienced God’s love in your life throughout the course of your day.

Take comfort in the fact that God loves you.

He loves you now.

He loves you after.

He loves you personally.

He likes you.
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​This post is a lesson developed by Bethany Harris inspired by and partly based on the book Lies Women Believe & The Truth That Sets Them Free  by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. You can purchase the book and accompanying study guide here.