GOD IS…LOVE?

God is Love.  (I John 4:8)

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Many of us sang that sweet song to the top of our little lungs in Sunday School.  But how many of us really KNOW it? Do you?

Oh, sure, we give lip service to God being Love and all that.  But then old thinking sabotages the experience of it. His Loving is nonstop, nonstop.  However, secretly we question whether He’s angry with us now, since we just messed up – AGAIN. We pull away, afraid to approach Him.  But He’s right there – waiting, Loving.  However, we may not feel it because we hide from Him.

(A quick BTW, you may notice in my writings what seems to be a typo.  No, I always capitalize the L in Love when I am talking about God’s Love.  It deserves a capital!)

I remember when I was a little girl squirming on the pew while my Daddy preached.  I was a little bitty thing, but I remember at times being afraid that God was mad at me for some unknown “sin” that I must have committed that week.  Now I had exercised “the faith of a little child” in coming to Christ early in life, and I had a very loving father (though he was not on this earth nearly long enough).  Yet I had not yet learned for myself about the tender and uninterrupted flow of Love from God.

That would only come over the years, when I really did give God every chance to be mad with me.  Though I wandered from His beaten path many times and made many mistakes, He persistently Loved!  He chased me with mercy and grace, and He kept drawing me back to Himself.  I learned by experience that He Loves me no more on my best-behavior days, and He Loves me no less in my worst ones.  

Does God sometimes allow us to experience the natural consequences of dumb actions?  Yes, He often does when we won’t listen and change.  But He does that in Love.  The scripture reminds us that God, like any good earthly parent, disciplines those He loves.  He wants us to have the best life, and He hurts when we are sabotaging that possibility.  He wants only good for us, and sometimes Loving discipline teaches us how to get it.

But here’s the bottom line…

When you are in Christ, all your mistakes have been paid for completely.  In Love, God provided that for you.

If you don’t yet know the Lord personally, you can know that He is reaching out to you and drawing you to Him in Love.  He is waiting to embrace you and to welcome you into His family.

My own life journey has been a long one, with many ups and downs – many of the downs of my own making.  But the good news for you and for me is, God ALWAYS loves us.  Like the loving father in the Prodigal Son story, God runs to meet us and to bear hug us any time we take a step toward Him in response to the magnetic pull of His loving call.

My story is your story.  God does not play favorites.  Our circumstances may be different, but God’s Love for us is the same.  No matter how far off God’s plan you go, you cannot put yourself out of His awareness and His Love for you.  He accepts you in Christ, and He wants you to become your very best.  You are His beloved.  He wants to communicate with you every day.  He treasures you.

God IS Love.  He cannot be anything else.

He Loves you.  He really Loves you!

O, my Lord, the way You Love me takes my breath away!  Thank You, thank You, thank You!