Check out Romans 8, nothing in all of creation, can separate you from God’s love. Sin, death, demons, life, angels, mountains, valley, flat tires, crying babies, speeding tickets, winning the lottery. God just loves you. The entire universe is wrapped in a big ball of the love of God. You can’t escape it, you can’t hide from it, and you can’t lose it. Right?
So why don’t we live like that? Why don’t we wake up every morning without a single worry, without any other thought except that the Creator of the Universe loves us? If you do you should give me the secret after you read this. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who wakes many mornings and my first thought is something like, “I have so much to do today” or “I hope Gemma’s not still upset about that stupid thing I did, or that thing I was supposed to do that I didn’t do.” Or “man I blew it again, God must be really mad at me.” We let all kinds of things cloud the fact that God just loves us because that’s who he is. We believe lies that if we’re not living a perfect life, if we don’t have it all together, if we’re not meeting some imaginary standard that the church has created then God does not love us. That if life is not in some kind of cruise control with things falling into place, God doesn’t love us. We let our mind be tricked into thinking that the junk in our life means God loves us less which leads our heart to refuse receiving God's love.
If you feel that way, if we’ve made you feel that way, I’m sorry. God loves you, and if you ask Him today if that’s true, I’m certain the spirit will reveal it to you.
But those things we think affect God's don’t affect God’s love, his love is constant and unchanging and absolute. It doesn’t mean there are no consequences for our choices, but God’s love is not changed or measure by our choices.
If you’re here today and the love of God is a just “concept” to you, if it’s just an idea you’ve grown up hearing about in Sunday School but you’ve never experienced it or you’ve never received it, I hope you don’t finish this post without stopping to pray that God will reveal himself to you. Do whatever you need to do to receive his love. Because you can’t love God until you know He loves you first. I struggled with this for a long time after becoming a Christian because my earthly relationships distorted what I thought a relationship with God was like. My issues with my earthly father caused me to have wrong view of what my Heavenly father is like.
The great thing is God never stops loving us. He never stops reaching out to us. The problem is we don’t receive it. We let all those things Paul mentioned, and a million more get between us so we can’t receive God’s love. We let our mind and our flesh win out over the unchanging love of God. Earlier in this passage in verse 6 Paul says this. “If your sinful nature controls your mind, there is death. But if the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is life and peace.” Our mind is easily fooled. The enemy tricks us all the time. Most of us know we’re not perfect, unless we’re self-righteous Pharisees- then we have a whole different problem to deal with. But most of know we’re messed up, and so we go out striving with all our might to be better, and to do more and get more, and to be more obedient. That way we’ll know God’s love more, we’ll be OK with him. Don’t let your mind trick you into thinking that God’s love is dependent on anything you can do other than receiving it. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will get closer to God by more striving. It’s backwards. It’s False. We love because he loved us first.
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