Remembering God’s Love

Pause:

Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus. 

Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.

Read:

1 John 4v8-10: “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Going Deeper:

One thing we are taught right from the beginning, as we start to follow Jesus, is that God really loves us. That he is enamored with us. That his love for us is so great that he sent his beloved Son to die on the cross for us, so that through him our sins could be forgiven, and our relationship with God reconciled. God’s love for us is one of the pillars of our faith and reasons why we follow him. It’s why in church we sing songs like “Jesus loves me this I know” and praises about “the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God”. 

But what’s been on my mind lately is this question: as followers of Jesus how many of us truly know the love of God for ourselves? 

Not intellectually or factually but deeply and intimately in our hearts, minds and souls. Not only theologically but in a life-changing, life-altering way. 

How many of us are currently overwhelmed by God’s love for us, feasting on it, remaining in it, not doubting for a second that his love for us cannot be altered, and will not change?

For some of us, our view of God’s love for us has been impacted by the love we have experienced from others, both in the past and maybe even during this Lockdown season. For me personally my relationship with my father has hugely impacted how I have perceived love. Love was not something to be trusted, it was fleeting and conditional. The standards for retaining it were always out of my reach. Love was self-seeking, shallow and something that could hurt you in a profound number of ways.

For some of us, we find it incredibly hard to believe that God could possibly love someone like us. As we review our lives, our sins, our mistakes, our past, it makes it hard for us to believe that God could love us, let alone like us. It can be so easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that love, even God’s, must be earned, fought for and hard won. There have been so many times in my own life, where I have felt that I needed to be better person and more deserving to be loved by anyone, including God. Perhaps during this pandemic, you have felt overwhelmed by the sin that has been revealed in your own life, and it’s lead you to question God’s love for you and your relationship with him.

Sometimes we find ourselves completely numb to the idea of God’s love for us. It can become so familiar, so loosely spoken about, so underwhelming to us. Verses like John 3v16 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”) roll so easily off my tongue, but at times has left me unmoved.  It’s a memorable, recognizable, well known verse that we can somehow become so used to, that we miss the outstanding life and beauty it carries, and the powerful effect that it has on our lives.

Sometimes in times of personal crisis, we find ourselves doubting God’s love for us. The love of God seems easier to believe in during seasons of celebration and abundance, when things are going well for us. But when we suddenly find ourselves enveloped in chaos and uncertainty our surety can quickly dissipate, leaving us questioning what we once believed. Theoretical Christianity and ideas of God’s love tend to collapse in times of crisis. In moments of difficulty and despair it’s our relationship with God, and a true and deep personal knowledge of his love that sustains us, that enables and empowers us to let go and surrender to him, trusting him with our lives.

We see evidence of this in the life of Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus finds himself in distress and turmoil as he faces arrest, brutal torture and death on the cross. In the face of crisis and uncertainty he turns to God in prayer asking: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will”. He is hoping for a way out of the extremely tough place he finds himself in, he is praying for a different path. But ultimately it is his relationship with his Father and his trust and belief in God’s love for him that enables him to surrender his will, and to trust God with his life.

Brennan Manning writes about this moment saying: “He (Jesus) plunged into the darkness of death not fully knowing what awaited him, confident that somehow, some way, his Abba would vindicate him.”

He knew the love his Father had for him, and that this love meant that God would not leave him defenseless, broken, alone, a victim of death. He knew that God would make a way, that God was his shield, that God would uphold him, and that God was his hope of eternal life. He had peace in the uncertainty and pain because he put his trust in God himself, whose very nature is love. As we look to the life of Jesus, it is an incredible example to us of how we can do the same in the midst of our own pain and suffering. 

As we reflect on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we are reminded not only of God’s incredible faithfulness and love towards Jesus, but also towards us. When we find ourselves doubting God’s love, the cross helps us to remember how lavish his love for us truly is, and of why we too can trust him with our lives. 

The story of Jesus and the cross is a powerful demonstration of the depth of God’s love for us, that helps us live with an awareness that the Father loves us beyond what we could ever possibly comprehend. That his love is better than any other love we have ever known or encountered before. That it is unconditional and remains unaltered despite our doubts, our sin or our apathy towards him. That in fact nothing in this world, “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 8v38-39). 

Reflecting on Jesus and the cross helps us to confidently stand during times of difficulty, in surrendered faith, as we are caught up in God’s overwhelming and reckless love for us.

It’s for this reason that Paul prays in Ephesians 3, that during times of affliction and suffering the church would know God’s love. V14-19: “For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

As we take time now to spend with God in prayer let’s reflect on Jesus and the cross and ask God to remind us of his great love for us. 

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us to know God’s love in a deep, personal and intimate way, that we might be strengthened at this time through our faith in him as we feast on and remain in his love.

Pray:

Respond to God in prayer by speaking to Him about what stood out to your from this passage this morning.

Listen:

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now?

Apply:

What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and by the Spirit?