Living with an Awareness of God's Love
The clear declaration of Scripture is God loves us. He loves us unconditionally, completely and eternally. The storyline of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation details God’s salvation history of humankind, the ultimate expression of His love. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross locked into the course of human history the ultimate expression of God’s love for us, the agape love of God. And it is God’s desire that we live, abide, in this experience of His agape love. Jesus pulls it all together for us in John 15:9 when He says, “just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. God finds many different ways to say it but the main message is always the same, “I love you.”
No doubt this is true because as fallible human beings we find so many ways to get disconnected from or to question our personal experience of abiding in God’s love. It didn’t take me very long to come up with a medium length list of behaviors or ways of thinking that diminish our experience of God’s love. Or at the very least block our awareness of the depth and persistent nature of the love of God, regardless of our circumstances. I have listed a below just a few of them.
Disobedience- In John 15:10 Jesus says if you want to “abide” in His love, keep His commandments.” From this verse and others, Jesus connects our walking in obedience to His revealed will as the first step to an abiding experience of His love. And I don’t think He is talking about perfect obedience as the standard but is the desire of our heart and the intention of our will generally, to walk in obedience? Little regard for obeying God’s will impacts our experience of receiving God’s love.
Expectations- Most of us have in our minds a definition of what it looks and feels like to be loved by God. It might be that we haven’t even really clearly worked through all of these expectations for ourselves, but they often rest in the unconscious as ungodly beliefs. We expect to have all of our most heartfelt prayers answered in a positive way and at the right time. We expect to be spared many of the trials and tribulations of life. We expect to always have enough money for the things we believe we need/want. We expect to enjoy good health and to receive healing when we are ill. In short, we expect life to be rewarding, and fulfilling the majority of the time, or close to it. Unbiblical expectations of God and our life with God diminish our experience of God’s love.
Shame/Unworthiness- Shame is that state of mind where we are just absolutely convinced there is something wrong with us. That we are uniquely and fatally, therefore irredeemably, flawed. In our minds, we are so damaged that even God’s love is not enough to make us whole. The sins, and sometimes iniquity, of abandonment, rejection, abuse of all kinds can tempt us to believe that we are simply not worthy of God’s love. Our deep sense of unworthiness leads us to believe that God doesn’t love us. This too diminishes our experience of God’s love.
Discontentment- Failure and disappointment tempt us to become discontented with our lives, and in turn lead us to a lack of gratitude. Pride tells us that we deserve better than we have received and once that message is received a lack of being satisfied and ingratitude are not far behind. It is the devil’s work that tempts us to look around and compare ourselves to others. The result is often more pride and selfishness along with a grumbling heart, for God resists pride but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). All will serve to diminish our experience of God’s great love for us.
The above examples are not an exhaustive list but rather possibilities to stimulate your thinking. The main idea here is since God loves never changes, why does our experience/awareness change? God is the constant and our experience is the variable. God wants to us to abide in His love because He is the source of the fruitful and abundant Christian life. The devil wants to keep us from by robbing, killing and destroying.
If you are not living with a daily awareness of God’s love, know He wants to change that beginning today. The way to abiding in God’s love is allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us to repentance. We need to allow Jesus to heal our hearts and renew our minds to reflect God’s truth about Him, how sees us and our circumstances. God has loved us by sending His Son, Jesus, to die for us. He is today loving us in a myriad of ways and what needs to increase is our awareness of them. Finally, remember God the Father will always love us just as He has always loved Jesus. He signed His guarantee at the cross 2000 years ago. You are loved!Author
Pastor Bruce is the Executive Director of God's Living Stones. He lives in Omaha, NE, with his wife Barb. They have two adult children.
Click Here For Content Archives