The Lord's Love
" Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
So we say with confidence,
" The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me ?"
-Hebrews 13:5-6
And so, I was reading a book by Joyce Meyer called 'Beauty for ashes'. As I was continuing, I discovered this great truth. Now, note that I'm using the word 'discovered' which means something which was 'already existing'. This truth is that the Lord loves me. !!
Oh..are you taking this simple ? Then here is something I have for you.
Listen. Our dear Lord Jesus, throughout the Holy Bible says He loved us, loves us, and will still love us. The matter of fact is that this 'love' that the Lord is talking about is pure- pure to the extent that it is 'whole'. I bet you'd never have received such love at all in your entire life because only God can give you 'such love'.
What's so special about the love of Our Lord Jesus ?
I've always thought of God's love to be based on my performance- That is, I've always thought that God loves me but when I make mistake, He gets disappointed with me and waits to give me love until I recover from my sins ( mistakes ). I've always thought of God's love to be 'My performance based'. I thought I need to 'earn' God's love through my good deeds. And so, I've felt lovable whenever I do some good works ( that I'm satisfied with ). But when I do mistakes, I feel really guilty and try to 'make up' for my sins. At those times, I really feel bad for my conduct. I feel bad until I feel I've been punished enough for my sins.
But to my surprise, this is not what God is. God's love never, never, ever changes though we may do good or not. In fact, we are never ourselves good enough to 'earn' God's love. We can never earn God's love at all. For Jesus, through his abundant mercy and grace has given them free to us. So, whether I do right or wrong, God loves me the same level. This truth was really a great surprise to me.
So the things I understood through 'the book' was that,
God loves you UNCONDITIONALLY !
God loves you PERFECTLY !!
God loves you 'NO MATTER WHAT' !!
And so, when I sin (make mistakes), God never hates me at all. In fact, my mistakes do not make God to love me 'any less'. The most important thing is friends, when you ask forgiveness for your mistake from the Lord, BELIEVE that Jesus has forgiven you and accept (receive) His love and forgiveness.
It is very much important to receive than to just ask.
Receiving can be illustrated like this:
Suppose that I sin and ask forgiveness from Jesus. Jesus Christ through His great mercy, love and grace hands me the paper called 'forgiveness'. Now, what should I do? Should I not reach out and RECEIVE the forgiveness. If I don't receive, then how come I feel forgiven and loved. On the part of the Lord, He has already forgiven me. But on my part, since I had not RECEIVED that forgiveness, I feel guilty all the more.!!
Friends so finally to sum up.
God loves you the same way all the time. He loves you so perfectly for He is gentle.
Feel that you are lovable. You need not do anything to 'earn' God's love and forgiveness for it can never be earned but is given to you 'free'. Accept it !!
