GOD LOVES ME - TO BECOME AN AMBASSADOR FOR CHRIST, Part 3

 

 

What happens when we are not confident that God loves us? I can tell you a lot about this because, for years, I doubted that God loved me:

 

·       I tried desperately to prove that I was worthy of being loved. It was life controlling.

·       I had to be the best at everything.

·       I studied popular people to try to be like them.

·       I became narcissistic and self-obsessed.

·       I had to always give myself positive affirmations to face life.

·       I lied to myself about who I am so I would not hate myself.

·       I couldn’t take criticism. It was devastating.

·       I was uncomfortable with people, convinced that they would reject me. Therefore, I rejected them first.

·       I had to wear a mask to prevent others from seeing the real me.

·       I didn’t even know who I was.

·       I became so self-conscious, there were times I couldn’t even talk.

 

Even after I came to God, I couldn’t believe that He loved me. I therefore I had to prove that I was worthy of His love, but I couldn’t. I knew I wasn’t.

 

How then did I become assured that He did love me? I was suffering so much that despite all the assurances of the Scriptures, I feared that God might be a sadist who enjoyed deceiving us. If God is all powerful, He certainly would be able to deceive me.

 

I didn’t want to believe this about God, but I couldn’t shake this doubt. But one day, as I was praying, I realized that my God couldn’t be a deceiver or a sadist because He had died a humiliating and excruciating death for my sins. A sadistic deceiver would never do such a thing:

 

·       but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8-10)

 

The truth of God’s love destroys every other doubt that can come into our minds like, “What if heaven turns out to be one great torture chamber?” How can we be assured that it will not be so? God’s proven love!

 

God’s love - the Gospel of Jesus Christ - is the Big Bang and the source of all our peace and security. It has become my safe-place to which I now run to find peace, security, strength, and renewal. Paul therefore prayed that we would:

 

·       …know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)

 

This knowledge is the way to “be filled with all the fullness of God.” But what must we do to be filled with this knowledge?

 

I thank God for my afflictions. For me, Jesus was my final stop and last hope, the end of the line. I had tried just about everything else, and all else had failed me. If Jesus failed me, I had nowhere else to go. Hoping against hope, I continued to meditate on His Words, and was gradually renewed:

 

·       Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

 

As strange as this might seem, I found that the Holy Spirit illuminates the Scriptures to provide us with every spiritual blessing:

 

·       May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:2-4)

 

Through His Word, through knowing His love for me, He has given me:

 

·       Confidence where I had no confidence,

·       Strength and courage where I had neither of these,

·       God- and other-centeredness in place of self-centeredness,

·       Peace in place of terror,

·       A joyful hiding-place instead of anxiety,

·       A desire to build up others in the faith instead of jealousy and bitterness,

·       And a love of my Savior instead of the agony of rejection.

·       A joy of coming into His presence instead of feelings of His disapproval.

 

Jesus promised that if we seek we will find:

 

·       “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

 

John reassures us that if we ask according to God’s will, we will receive:

 

·       And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)

 

To continue to ask that you would know and grow in confidence of the love of God is according to God’s will. However, for me, it has been a long but necessary journey.

I haven’t given you many verses that teach of God’s exceeding love, but they are gloriously available, even if sometimes hidden.