Real Love Feels Real Good!

This is the Glorious God’s Truth: That we have true love in Christ Jesus!

Did you know that if you have accepted Christ as your Savior, that you are a child of God? It’s true. And God LOVES His children deeply.

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12

There is truly no way to fully comprehend God’s love for us. We simply cannot do it justice. We can only imagine it and then just bask in it and love him back with everything that we have. God cannot be put into a box.

The Lord does, however, want for us to know him as best we can even with our limited human capacity. In fact, he wants us to seek him and love him  so we can find him. He knows we are limited, so he tells us  in Proverbs 8:17……………..

“I love those who love
me; And those who diligently seek me will find me.

This is a good thing. This is another one of God’s mercies he shows to us out of his love for us. Because God cannot be put in a box, he knows that he would have to allow us to find him by his own power. We are to diligently seek him…with all our hearts. And He will let us find Him.

God wants for us to know that he loves us more than we could ever imagine loving to be. And he wants us to love him back. So, I have to admit to myself that although I realize God is so mighty, so eternal, so BIG…..that to have any kind of personal relationship, I end up needing to do all that I can just to seek him…even if I cannot fully comprehend everything that he is. And I have to ask him to reveal himself to me. Because I am not capable of doing that by my own power.

God loved us FIRST. The bible tells us clearly that he even loved us while we were still sinners.

“But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

God gave us HIS SON to show us how much he loves us…..to show us how much he wanted us to become his children and be in his family for all eternity and to accept that love for the free and glorious gift that it truly is!

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

And although we serve a mighty, all-powerful, not-bound-by-time-or-dimension God, we also worship a God who wants to be our Father.

He is not just our Father because he created us, and he is not our Father only because he has all authority over us. He isn’t our Father merely because we are accountable to him. These things are all true and are not to be diminished.

But there is something else about God being our Father that we need to know without a doubt: Something he definitely does not want for us to miss……

He is our Father who LOVES us. He loves us DEEP. He loves us MIGHTILY. He loves us FULLY. He loves us THOROUGHLY. He IS LOVE. He is the FATHER OF ALL LOVE!

“And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7

How many people reading this are parents? I have three beautiful children that the Lord has blessed my husband and myself with in this life. We always have to remind ourselves that they are more HIS children than they are OURS. They have been sent to us on loan and I feel privileged to be blessed with that gift from our Almighty Father.

I love those three souls beyond description. I would do anything for them. But I cannot say that I ever counted every last hair on their heads. I know that doesn’t mean I don’t love them with every ounce of my being, but God has counted…..EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

Every last ounce of us holds value to our Father God. He loves us down to the last hair follicle. Down to the micro-level. He loves every micro-piece of us. And he loves the whole of us.

Our Father God loves us flaws and all.

He loves us in our brokenness.He loves us even when we stray.He loves our imperfections. He loves our desire to grow closer to him and to know him.He loves us inside. He loves us outside.And He wants to be with us for all eternity. And he wants us to want that for ourselves.

Guess what else? He loves us to love HIM back.

God’s love for us is always there. It always has been – always will be. But we have to choose it. He will still love us (even while sinners)….but he will not force us to receive that love. He will not force us to live with him for all eternity. We don’t have to choose to sit on his lap and revel him looking upon us with love forever and ever. We don’t have to allow him to take us under his mighty wing and bless us with being in his everlasting presence. We don’t have to call him “Father.”

But He wants us to….He wants us to very, very much. That’s great news, isn’t it? What an absolute and amazing gift!

What Jesus did for us on the cross covered all our sin so that we could be with our Father God forever if we choose to accept the gift of salvation he offers us!!!!!!! That feels good…that feels REALLY good.

The love we have in Christ transcends every kind of love in the world put together and multiplied by a trillion for eternity, Amen! It is so far beyond that, though. For even the best of the love that we have in this world is tainted by something. But not God’s. God’s love is not of this world.

Our Father’s love is pure. It is beyond abundant. It is unending and merciful. His love is holy. Because it is God’s love. His love is real. It is ours for the accepting. He holds it out to us with outstretched arms. Because it is God’s love. God’s love has no bounds. God chooses to love us. He doesn’t have to. But He still chooses to. Because it is God’s love. God loved us first. He will love us last. He will love us best, even when no one else does. Because it is God’s love.

There are millions upon millions of other things about God’s love we can not fully understand, but these things….these things I do know. Because he has given them to me again and again and again. It is God’s love.

THAT is the part that is truly hard to fully grasp, for me – the enormity of it all. But I sure am happy about it. And I certainly am grateful for it. I am grateful for my Father in Heaven. I am so thankful for God’s love.

Isn’t it great to know that we never have to feel like an orphan?

“We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us – not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all of our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Yes, God’s love is real love. And God’s real love is really, really good. And I am glad that my Father God’s love isn’t bound by a box. I am overjoyed that it is limitless, never-ending, and of HIM, not of THIS WORLD.

I am so happy that I get to be His child. He has a lot of names, all of which are important and fitting. But the one I call out today with all my  heart is “Abba Father”….(“Daddy” in Arabic).

I love you Abba Father. Thank you for your real love for me. It feels good.

Advertisement