Love. It is the deepest desire of the human heart. All people have a need to be loved, and to love. Year after year, many people live for that next relationship where they can find true love. There is a hope that maybe if someone can be found that you love, and that loves you in return, that the cavern in your soul will be filled, and you will be complete. That is a treadmill you can never get off of. No person can complete you. The only love that can fill you is divine love. Only God can make you whole.
1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Most people focus on their love for God, but the Holy Spirit is teaching us that our love for God is not as important as God’s love for us. No one has ever loved God the way He deserves. Not for a day, or even a minute. God doesn’t need our love. He doesn’t need anything from us. We need everything from Him. When you understand that God loves you, and He loved you first, then you can love Him. True love for God doesn’t flow from effort, but from gratitude. God has loved you more than anyone else, for longer than anyone else, and with greater passion and intensity than anyone else.
God loved you from eternity past. God loved you before time existed. God dreamed of your relationship with Him, when only He existed. You have been on God’s mind forever. You see, God is love(1 John 4:8). He is love by nature. God is a trinity. Three persons in one God. God has always had a perfect relationship and perfect love within Himself, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because He is love, and love is within Him, He created you in His image, to love and be loved. God created you to be loved by Him. He didn’t create you out of need, but out of overflow. God has so much overwhelming, abundant, overflowing love, that He made you to pour it out on. Your deepest purpose is not to do anything, but to simply receive His love. So be loved. Live loved. God made you to be loved, because He has so much to give. God is endless love. He can give you all of it, and still have an endless supply. So stop striving. Stop seeking. Stop trying to earn it. Stop trying to be good enough. Stop, and just let God love you.
There is nothing that can separate you from that love. God gave Jesus for you on that cross, so that you would have unhindered access to Him. In His presence is fullness of joy, and you have been brought near by the blood of Jesus. Jesus is our propitiation. That means that He is the sacrifice that payed for all our sins. All the wrath that God has for your sin was poured out on Jesus, and He satisfied it. Through Jesus there is nothing that can get in the way of your relationship with God. That word propitiation literally is “mercy seat” in the Greek. That is reminiscent of the ark of the covenant. The picture given is that all God sees when He looks at you is the blood of Jesus and His perfect righteousness. In Christ, God doesn’t see your failures or law breaking, but the perfection of Jesus, given to you by faith.
Never forget that God loves you and always has. He always will and He created you to receive His love. so rest in God’s premeditated love for you.
If you don’t know Jesus, I want to give you the opportunity to trust Him for your salvation and receive His finished work by faith. If you want to make Jesus the Lord of your life simply prayer this in your heart, as a way to put your faith in Him. Say, “ Jesus, I make you the Lord of my life. I know I’m a sinner, but I believe. I believe that You are the Son of God. I believe You died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that You rose on the third day for my justification. I ask you to save me now. I receive you by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen”
Refreshing Grace 