I have long known that I struggle with believing, really believing that
God love ME. Oh, I know, ♪Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me
so.♫ And I can easily tell others that God love them. And I can corporately
include myself when I say He loves everybody. My head gets all that. And my mind
can repeat all of that by rote.
But my spirit has a harder time grasping the reality of God looking
down on my tiny little piece of the world and that He, the awesomely wonderful
creator of the entire universe, can pick out just me and love just me. Perhaps
you struggle with that concept, too. We can look to our childhoods and blame
our fathers or mothers for not doing this or that - or for doing this thing or
that. But there comes a time in every person’s life when we have to look to
ourselves and figure how to see things in light of Scripture.
My struggle with believing that I am loved individually by God is not
even about all my innumerable flaws and sins. I believe with all my being that
Christ died for all sins of all mankind and that every single individual human
being can come under the blood of Jesus by simply trusting Him to wash them
clean and by letting that choice affect the everyday choices of life. And from
the depths of my soul, I am so grateful for God’s plan of eternal salvation.
And grateful for how that plan works out in living here on earth. He is the only great and merciful God.
But it seems like I am a face in the crowd of those who trust in Jesus.
The Bible tells me that all things work together for good to those who love
God. (Romans 8:28) I believe that to my core. But He does that for everyone who
loves Him, right?
As I've mentioned before, I’m nearing the end of Breaking Free by Beth Moore,
and in the homework, she has helped me see the possible cause for my struggle
with this concept. Numbers 23:19 clearly tells us, that “God is not a man, that
he should lie, nor
a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does
he speak and then not act? Does he promise and
not fulfill.” NIV
I think even though I have tried hard not to “put God in a box” and
have warned others not to do the same, I have mostly seen God through my human
eyes and somehow think that just as in human love, especially by that of friends, God's love ebbs
and flows. Human love can be affected by distance as people move, time between visits,
misunderstandings, severe disagreements in beliefs, PMS, so many variables in
human love. But God is NOT human. And, I guess that as a human, I don’t even
know how that would look. But I have to believe that His love for me is not the
same as friends that have come and gone. Or my indifference to those ebbs and
flows. God is not man and He fulfills His promises.
He promises that His love is unfailing. In fact, in John 17:23 Jesus
said that God the Father loves us as much as He loves The Son. And He surely
includes all of believers in that because just 3 verses before that, and in the same line of thought, Jesus said, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one..." And in John 10:16, He talks about having other
folds of sheep that will be brought in – that is the Gentiles. So I guess it’s
true – God loves His people as much as He loves Jesus. Wow! Let that sink in.
Beth Moore encourages her students to do a word search for “unfailing
love" in the Bible. If you do that, it is clear that God’s love is unfailing – unlike human
love. I have been trying to repeat daily, God has unfailing love for ME. I
believe it, Lord, help my unbelief.”
“…The
LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great
delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over
you with singing."
Zephaniah
3:17 NIV
It's good to remember that God loves us so much and that His love never fails.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on getting that into my spirit. My head has it. :)
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