God Loves You
You don’t love God enough
You don’t do enough for God
God’s mad at you
God will never forgive you
God’s promises are for everyone else, but not you
I wanted so desperately to believe that God loved me, but I couldn’t just change my mind so quickly. I began to search my Bible for the truth, and although I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, I did find some stories that gave me some hope.
Like Luke 7, where the sinful woman burst into a stranger’s house and poured perfume of the feet of Jesus. Maybe she had heard Him preaching, or maybe she saw how kind He was. And she began to have hope that maybe He could help her.
She probably thought about this for days before she mustered the courage to do what she did. But she had to do something, because the weight of condemnation was too much for her to bear. And so she took a chance…
She mustered all her courage and burst into a house where she wasn’t invited or even welcome. She definitely got their attention; they were all staring at her now, there was no turning back. She walked over to Jesus, crying her eyes out, and poured perfume on his feet. And He said,
“Your sins are forgiven.”… Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:48,50) (NIV)
My goodness. Just like that, that horrible, heavy weight of condemnation that she had struggled under for so many years was gone. All because she took a chance.
And I was encouraged by that story. I thought, "what if Jesus could do that for me?" I had to take baby steps; I had to say…
What if God could love me…
What if God could forgive me…
Is there the slightest chance?
I saw that David also knew this love of God; over and over David wrote of the “unfailing love” of God! Notice what David didn’t say…
I’m a murderer; so God must hate me.
I’m a reject of society – even my brothers hate me
Maybe God’s punishing me
I slept with another man’s wife; so God could never forgive me
Nope- David didn’t say any of that. He took God at His word. Wherever God’s Word said, “I love you,” David would say, “I believe that!” Wherever God’s Word said…
I will forgive you, or
I will bless you, or
I will fight your battles for you, or
I am always with you…
David said, “I believe that too!!!”
So I read these kinds of things, and I said, what do I have to lose? I’ll start to believe God loves me too. I’ll start to thank Him for loving me, and for forgiving me too. And I did.
It sounds like a little thing, but to me, it was monumental. Before I could even try to believe any of the other promises, I had to believe this one thing – God loves me!!
Did the negative thoughts go away? Not immediately. I still had the same, familiar thoughts go through my mind.
But now, when these lying thoughts came to me, I began to recognize and believe that they were lies. And I would just say…
Thank you so much Jesus, for forgiving me
Thank you so much Jesus that You love me!!
It was so freeing! So exciting! Little by little, I felt the weight of guilt and condemnation drop off me. I began to believe and even feel God's love for me.
David said that he would meditate on God’s unfailing love. (Psalm 48:9) (NIV)
The word meditate in the Hebrew means, “to converse with one’s self.” (Strong 1983)
David talked to himself about the love of God, the protection of God, the forgiveness of God- David talked to himself about all the promises and blessings of God!! And then, if he wasn’t talking to himself about the promises, he was breaking out into praise for the promises!!
And as he meditated and praised God for these things all day, he became just like the words He spoke…
Blessed, loved, and forgiven.
Take every negative thought captive and replace it with the beautiful, powerful, loving Word of God. Simple? Yes, but oh, so powerful.
References
Strong, James. Strongs Exhaustive Concordance: Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order, Together with Dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek Words of the Original, with References to the English Words. Baker Book House, 1983.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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