If we really knew God’s love for us!.
If we understood, at a heart level, His quality of love which can’t be changed!
If we realized God delights in being with us. If we comprehended His willingness to send His Son to die in our place.
If we learned to remain in Jesus’ love for us.
If we really knew these things at a heart level – Our adversary’s schemes to persecute us would be shallowed up in God’s ocean of love.
Since God’s amazing love for us is absolutely essential, It’s good to uncover what threatens us knowing it.
Following are three threats.
God’s Love is Beyond Understanding
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God ( Ephesians 3:14-19 NASB).
God’s incomprehensible love for us doesn’t fit in our heads. We need to lay aside our desire to mentally understand it.
In the above verse, written to believers in Ephesus, Paul says God’s love surpasses our knowledge. Even though, as believers, we have Christ in our hearts, Paul prays Christ’s love would dwell (settle and pervade) there. He wants the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened[1], so that God’s love would expand more completely there.
Oh the vastness of His Love! Like an ocean, the dimensions can’t be grasped. However, as our hearts are enlightened, as awareness of His love grows, we become more and more “filled to the fullness of God.”
Story: As I read about a love which is beyond my ability to comprehend, I’m thrust into a quandary. On the one hand I feel stuck. If I can’t understand it, how do I know it.
I’m realizing that though God’s love for me surpasses knowledge, my heart can contain it. I join Paul’s prayer that, by His Spirit, I might grow in my awareness of the vastness of God’s love for me.
May God’s love, which is beyond words come alive more and more in my heart that I might love others as Christ has loved me.
God’s Love for Us is Not Affected by How We’re Treated
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, *got up from supper, and *laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He *poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. (John 13:3-5 NASB)
Jesus didn’t entrust Himself to men. He knew their hearts[2]. His confidence was in God’s love alone.
In the above verse, Jesus washed the feet of a man who would deny Him (Peter) and a man who would betray Him (Judas). And He knew it.
Hours later, He would perform the ultimate example of sacrificial love by dying to rescue mankind from the wrath of God.
Jesus didn’t allow how people treated Him to rattle Him. He didn’t need their love. He knew where He came from. He knew where He was going. And while He was on earth, since He knew His Father’s love, He had all things.
If, like Jesus, we don’t need the approval of people, we can love freely as He did, expecting nothing in return. As we dwell in Jesus’ love for us, how people treat us, though painful, won’t affect our value.
We are deeply loved by God. This is our value.
For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10 NASB).
Story: A few years ago I became aware that I’ve “required” love from the important people in my life. I certainly love them, but since my love cup was not full, I needed their love in return. I see now that this is not only unloving, but it kept me in bondage to the actions and feelings of others.
Occasionally, I still struggle with this when I feel rejected or unloved. However, as the awareness of God’s complete love for me grows, the chains of “needing” the love of people are breaking and falling off.
This frees me to love others purely and reduces the threat of doubting God’s love when people hurt me.
Our Enemy Does Not Want Us to Know God’s Love
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2nd Corinthians 10:3-5 NASB).
At all costs, our enemy wants to keep us from knowing God’s love. Since he’s out to afflict us, the peace, hope and joy of us resting and walking in God’s love is the exact opposite of what he desires for us.
The devil’s tactics are ancient and predictable. He’s constantly accusing us and seeking to hide God’s love from us.
Based on the truth about God’s love, we’re to disagree with his lies and agree with what we know is true. Agreeing with the truth, and not the lies, gives no foothold for our enemy to fortify within.
Familiar, life shaping lies we’ve agreed with in the past can be destroyed by God’s truth. The weapons of our warfare are “divinely powerful” (sourced in God and able to accomplish what is intended) for the destruction of all strongholds and speculations.
Paul tells us to take every thought captive and to obey Christ by believing what He says.
Story: Personally, one of the enemy’s tactics with me is to make me feel like a failure and to feel rejected. As I dig in, I see a correlation between the two: Unless I succeed, I will be rejected.
Over the years, I recognized this as the enemy’s attempt to hide God’s everlasting love from me. The facts is that my value is in what Christ has done, not my efforts.
When I recognize the lie and rest in the truth the pressure of living life to succeed is crumbled and washed away in the blood of Jesus.
Conclusion
Previously, we established that God’s love for us is eternal and can’t be changed. This quality of love motivated God to rescue us from His wrath by the death of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus loves us as much as God loves Him. His love for us chases away our fears and is the source of all our loving. God’s love roots and grounds our soul. It enables us to delight in Him and to love others as He’s loved us.
God’s incredible love is beyond our understanding and is designed to be held in our hearts. As the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, and our awareness of God’s great love for us grows in depth of experience, the way people treat us and the lies Satan feeds us CAN’T change us in the slightest degree.
Prayer
Lord, the more my heart grows in true awareness of Your great love for me, the more my soul experiences Your peace, Your hope and Your joy. Yet, so many forces are at work to try and hide it. You’ve commanded me to remain in Your love. No matter how folks treat me or how hard my circumstances, Your love holds. Please teach me to judge every word or thought based on Your truth and nothing else. Help me to quickly recognize lies so I can disagree with them and agree with what You say. Thank you for loving me and wanting to be with me. Amen.
Personal Study
Highlight Romans 8:31-39
Explain it in your own words
Apply it to your life
Respond to God in prayer
[1] Ephesians 1:18
[2] John 2:24
[3] I Peter 5:6-9
Previous posts in the UP series:
.Joy in the Journey is about the gladness of God’s nearness in the midst of life’s adventures.
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