It is not long before those who seek to learn more about Jesus are told all about how God loves you – each of you individually. If you are like me, you might ask, why does he love me? How does he love me?
This is such an important subject that I am writing five short articles to explore this amazing gift central to the Christian faith about How God Loves You.
I would like to explore how God loves each one of us in this series, and I will use the theme of God’s grace and look into what it means for us today and why it is so important.
We are all familiar with the word love and what it means to us today, but the word grace is not commonly used these days. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes grace as; charity, clemency, leniency, and mercy. (It goes on to say) While all these words mean “a disposition to show kindness or compassion,” grace implies a benign attitude and a willingness to grant favours or make concessions. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Stuart Briscoe (an American Pastor) once said that; Justice is getting what we deserve; Mercy is not getting what we deserve, and God’s Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.
We don’t deserve God’s grace because we are all broken people, born into a broken world. But an important thing to understand is that we do not see ourselves as God does. We see ourselves through distortions caused by our insecurities and the insecurities of others and the brokenness of this world. But God sees us as his beautiful children and offers us peace and love rather than condemnation or confusion.
God is reckless in His love for us
God spreads his love and grace with reckless abandon to all because those who perceive themselves as worthless, God knows as precious; those who perceive themselves as insignificant, God knows as essential; those who perceive themselves as outcasts, God welcomes and accepts them.
When we accept Jesus into our lives, we become God’s adopted children, and he offers his love and grace freely. Can you imagine being an adopted child of God, the maker of heaven and earth who knew us before we were born and loves us more than we can comprehend in our mortal shell?
By following the teachings of Jesus we gradually become the person God intended us to be from the beginning of time. It does not happen in a blinding flash it is a lifelong work, although benefits can appear quite quickly and then accumulate to allow us to eventually become the person God created us to be.
By accepting Jesus into our lives, we can live in the hope of dropping the chains that have bound us and becoming more than good enough. We can live in the hope of being glorified with Him and receive the promise of life eternal.
The three articles below in this series offer examples of the ways in which God loves us:
Part 2 Les Miserables; Part 3 The Prodigal Son; Part 4 The Workers in the Vineyard
You can discover more about How God Loves You in the links below:
