"God loves me."
Profound three words but very simple. We’ve heard it before, many times. Yet fewer and fewer people truly experience what these 3 words mean for daily living under the sun.
Reread it...this time very slowly… “God Loves me”
Does it feel a bit far-fetched? God who I cannot see, loves me? Me? What does this mean really? what is love?? How different is it from what I’ve experienced?
Now let’s read a more expanded version of what love is:
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself,
is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own,
is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. - 1 Cor 13:4-8
Let's try this again… this time out loud… “God loves me!”
Is it easy to love like this?? Is it easy to receive this kind of love?
I must admit it's hard to believe that this kind of love is humanly possible.
It's hard to see evidence of this love nowadays.
"Love keeps no record of wrongs" - You mean "forgive and forget"? "In this world?????" huh????
"Love always trusts" - "Always trusts??" "In this corrupt world, where people are sometimes passionately selfish"
In this world, we'll realize that we are incapable of giving this kind of love. Let alone receiving it from someone genuinely without fearing being manipulated. But this is precisely why this love is needed. As much as we struggle to show it, deep down we can deny that we need this kind of love. Deep down we desperately crave a pure, and unconditional love that can only be given by God.
The verse in Heb 1:3 says:
"... the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being..."
You see, in Jesus, we do not just have a saviour dying for our sins. In Jesus, we see God, the almighty one, taking our form, putting himself in our shoes and showing us the love we desperately need and crave. In Jesus we see God showing us himself, his true and very essence.
Jesus makes it possible to believe that God can love a person like you and me.
So this is what it means to delight in God’s love. Look at Jesus and meditate on his time on earth.
See how Jesus expressed the very heart of God...
when he met the needs of the woman who was "husband-hoping"
or how about the leper who wasn’t so sure if Jesus was willing to heal him let alone touch his leprous hands?
Or how about the man possessed by legions of demons whom Jesus crossed the turbulent Galilean sea just to meet?
Or how about the woman who was caught in adultery
and much more...
Meditate on Jesus’ display of love, pure and unadulterated 1 Cor 13:4-8 kind love and keep saying these three words to yourself: “God loves me!”
Welcome to February,
Welcome to our month of: "Delighting in God's love"