Amanda BethSharing the Truths Behind the TRUTH

Oct 15th Monday’s Blog: God Loves YOU!

To celebrate the two year anniversary of this blog, I wanted to share the first post God spoke to me to write. I pray this post is a fresh reminder of how much God loves you!

God Loves YOU!

You have probably heard this over and over, that it no longer penetrates into your heart. It’s hard to be moved by something when you don’t feel it. There are moments when hearing isn’t always enough. Sometimes you need to see it to believe it. I want to take you deeper in the knowledge of God’s love for you, beyond just hearing the words “God loves you.”

I have four children and through the years God’s often used my relationship with them to reveal a greater depth of His love for me. I had an incident awhile back as I was getting ready to bathe my infant. As I was preparing the bathtub, our water valve malfunctioned unbeknownst to me and the tub filled with scalding hot water.

While I was cooling the water, my son proceeded to try to find a way to climb into the bathtub. He was so determined that I had to do everything I could to keep him from jumping in and getting burned. As he was screaming at me, he managed to pull away from me. I was able to catch him by his legs just as he was heading face first into the water.

God used this incident to reveal how great His love is for us. He showed me that we are just like my infant. We often want to plow right through Him and jump into things that only end up hurting us. God tries everything He can to stop us, deter us, warn us, and hold us back, but we plow right through Him with determination to get to what we think we need or want.

God holds us back from certain things and warns us for our protection. It’s not to keep us from what we want. It’s to keep us safe. These things may not be so obvious to us, but God knows the danger that is behind the things that we just don’t see. Just like my baby, I wanted to protect him, though he didn’t understand why I was holding him back. God loves us so much that He wants to protect us from everything that is harmful to us.

When we refuse God, and do not listen to Him, we not only hurt ourselves but we hurt Him as well. God said in Jeremiah 13:17, “But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the LORD’s flock will be taken captive.” Just as I would’ve been in tears if my son had fallen into that water and gotten burned, God even more so weeps for us when we fall into things that are destructive to us.

If God made us in His image and He knows how many hairs are on our very head (Genesis 1:27, Matthew 10:30), then how valuable and precious we must be to Him! Because my children came from me, I deeply love them from my heart. If I could love my children so deeply, then how much more could the God who created us love us!

We see the greatest display of God’s love in Jesus. I wouldn’t even think of giving my children’s lives for anyone. Yet, God’s love is so great that He gave the ultimate sacrifice, His only Son, in order to save us because He deeply loves us.

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 4:9-10

Though Jesus was sinless, He paid the price for ALL our sins, so we who would receive Him would be made holy. Then our Holy God could come and live in us and be close with us, as He originally intended. When we receive Jesus, we receive God’s love for us.

As we spend time talking to God, studying His word, and relying on Him to help us obey what He teaches us, we start to see how vast His love really is. The more I get to know God, the more I fall deeper in love with Him, because He continues unveiling my eyes to see an even greater depth of His love for me.

But whenever a person turns [in repentance] to the Lord, the veil is stripped off and taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (emancipation from bondage, freedom).

2 Corinthians 3:16-17, AMP

I pray that you would allow God to remove the veil over your heart by receiving Jesus, the only One who can unveil God’s true love for you. Give your heart undividedly over to the One who knows what is best for you because He deeply cares for you.

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 saints, 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 3:16-19