I’m convinced we go through different stages of understanding God’s great love for us throughout the course of our lives. If your faith journey in Jesus Christ began in your early childhood years, like mine did, your understanding of His love may have been a simplistic, child-like acceptance, of the fact that Jesus loves you because the Bible told you so.
As I got older, I began questioning whether or not I was worthy of receiving His great love. When the challenges and difficulties of this life began to rock my world, and I made choices that led me further away from the heart of God, I often wondered if His love still remained. I felt so unworthy. I didn’t believe that I could be loved just as I was, flaws and all–not perfectly loved, anyway. I bought into the lie that I had to earn God’s love. I really hoped God loved me unconditionally, but deep down I became quite convinced that God’s love for me was measured by my own willingness or ability to love and obey Him. If I failed Him in some way, I believed I was at risk of being rejected and abandoned by God. I felt ashamed in my weakness, and bound by my sin, rather than free and forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Jesus was willing to give His own life for you. His grace is enough. You don’t have to be “enough,” because Jesus already is. God uses our most humbling moments to demonstrate His great love for us! He allows us to be humbled, so that in our weakness, His power might be perfected in us. It’s the power of His love that dusts us off, picks us up, and replaces ashes with beauty. God will dry your tears. He will lift up your head, and place a crown upon it. What a gift it is to know that you are perfectly loved, even at your worst. God’s love is unchanging. His love is never failing. So humbling is His love!
It’s been a long, difficult journey towards learning to live perfectly loved, but God’s faithful love, time and again, has never failed me. When I feared I would be abandoned, and anxiety raged within me, God reassured me that His love would never leave me. When I was most humbled by my sin, and felt most empty, was when I felt the love of my Savior in greatest measure. Despite my weaknesses and failures, God has continued to pour out His favor and blessing upon me.
My grandmother recently passed away. She was a gift from God to me! I recently came across something she wrote. “My dear God has blessed me with His love, and I am humbled by the gift.”
In humility and brokenness, our hearts are opened to the understanding of the gift of God’s love for us. I pray you are humbled and broken enough, by the gift of God’s love for you, that you can learn to receive it in greater measure, and be blessed all the days of your life!
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).