I myself did not realize how much he loves me for a long time. We all know he generally loves the world, but do you know how much he loves YOU as an individual?
The more I have worked with kids, the more I have understood this love. God loves me the way I have loved the kids I have worked with. He wants to take care of me like I wanted to take care of them. :) He wants to hold me and show me how much he loves me like I did with them. He wants to wrap his arms around me and hold me in his lap. He wants to tell me how much of an angel I am and how great and cute he thinks I am.
I am sure I will understand this love more and more once my daughter arrives. :) Even that won't compare though. God loves us 100 times more than we love anything on this earth, because he is perfect. He does not have the selfishness of the flesh to struggle with. His love is complete and perfect and grand. HIs love takes up and fills the whole universe! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FxaUYjRtkc
1 John 4:10
"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."Isaiah 41:13
"For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”God does not want us to fear because we are to trust in him. He is watching over us. He will protect us. To worry and fear is to mistrust God. Fear is the opposite of faith.
1 John 4:19
"We love because he first loved us."If God did not love us, we would not be as capable of loving others or God. Before Jesus came humans obeyed God out of duty, but their hearts were not really in it. Like the verse, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
After we received the Holy Spirit and a new heart we are now able to fully love others and God. :) On our own we are hardly capable of love. Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing." Apart from God in us we cannot love, really love. God is our source. He enables us to love others and Him fully. Amen. :)
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."God loved us so much that he saved us from an eternal death in hell, where "the fire never goes out." He will take us, who believe in his son, into an everlasting paradise in heaven. That is pretty awesome. :) But so often we take this fact for granted or forget about it. We always have something to be thankful for, that we are not destined for hell. Never forget that! Amen. :)
Romans 5:8
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."We did NOTHING to deserve God's favor, grace and love. We were still sinners, spitting in his face, and he died for us. Why? Because that is how much He loves us. Despite what we did or do, he will always love us. He created us. He is our father. There is nothing we can do to make him stop loving us, because he loved us before we ever loved him. :)
Ephesians 3:19
"Know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."It is fully understanding and knowing God's love that makes us become filled to overflowing. We then have the fullness of God, because God IS love. When we fully understand love and His love, then we will be filled to the fullness of God, and we will lack nothing. We will no longer have any empty cavities or holes. We will not need to look anywhere else for things to fill us. We will be completely and totally full in, through and from God. Amen! :)
Romans 8:35-39
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."If you are going through hard times, God still loves you. If you are being persecuted, God still loves you. :) Do not confuse your hard times with God having stopped loving you. Hard times are Satan trying to oppose you and stop you or discourage you. Keep pressing on. Keep running. Keep fighting the good fight. God always loves you, no matter what you are going through and no matter what you have done. If you are without food or clothes or near death, God still loves you. Your lack of things does not mean that God no longer loves you. When we die, God will be there, for those whose faith is in Jesus. "To live is Christ and to die is gain." No ruler can keep God's love from us. Nothing in the future, no evil power of Satan, nothing in the entire world can make God stop loving us. His love is always there and it is always available to us. :)
Jeremiah 31:3
"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."Psalms talks of God's unfailing love. His love lasts forever and it never fails. God is not like man that is fickle and changes constantly. God is "the same yesterday, today and forever." He is always faithful. He will never leave us or abandon us. He is everywhere and in everything so he cannot leave us. He will never let us go.
1 John 3:1
"See what kind of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are."Galatians 2:20
"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."Jesus said, "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
Jesus died for us and therefore multiplied himself. He was one, but when he died, he became many, that is us, the church. He is now living inside of each one of us. He multiplied himself in dying so that we could be filled with him, God. Christ lives in us. Christ has become part of us. We, the church, are his body. He lives and breaths through us. He reaches the world through us. Jesus is gone now but we are here, and he lives through us, now, here. He ministers to the world through us, now, here. We are his hands and feet, loving the world as he did but now and here.
1 John 4:9
"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him."John 15:9
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love."Jesus loves us as much as the Father loves him. :) If we abide in God/Christ's love we will be free. "Perfect love casts out fear." Fear is restrictive. Fear makes you paralyzed. But God's perfect love makes us free and at peace. :)
We abide in Christ's love by remaining in the word. "In the beginning was the word." Christ is the word, the Holy Bible. As long as we remind ourselves of God's promises and love for us found in Scripture, we are abiding in Christ's love. "Remain in me and I will remain in you." :) Amen.
1 John 4:8
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."We are able to love others because God fills us with his love to overflowing. It cannot help but spill out onto others. :)
1 John 3:16
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."We need to be willing to sacrifice for others. We need to not just care about ourselves. If we would really be willing to die for others, we can say we really love them.
Hebrews 13:5
"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”We do not need to worry about money because God ultimately is our provider. He gives us everything we need. He will take care of us.
Mark 10:13-15
"And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”Jesus even loves children, which back then was harder to believe. He loves "the least of these." He calls us to become like little children because little children understand love. They can love freely. They do not have prejudices yet or anything holding them back from loving others yet.
Luke 15:7
"Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."God loves the lost more than those who "think" they are saved and righteous already. He loves those who know they need a savior most.
Luke 15:1-32
"Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ... "Jesus loved the untouchables. He loved the outcasts. He loves ALL people. He does not discriminate for any reason.
Matthew 5:45
"So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."God loves the world. He blesses all equally in some ways. :)
Revelation 3:20
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."God pursues us constantly. He is always asking us to let him in, to every part of us. He wants to be with us and a part of us. He longs to have community with us, because he loves us. :)
1 Corinthians 13:3-10
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."John 15:13
"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."John 10:10
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."God does not want to take away our life, as Satan lies to us that he does. He wants to give us the most full life filled with joy possible! :)
Malachi 3:17
“They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him."We belong to God who longs for us because he loves us. :) We are his treasured possession, even though we are so small. "What is man that you are mindful of him." Be he knows the numbers of hairs on our head and our thought before we even think it. How awesome! :)
Psalm 103:11
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him."That is incredibly high. That is miles and miles of distance from the earth to outer space. :) That is how much he loves us. The amount of love we are capable of would probably only be as tall as the tallest roller coaster. But God's love for us soars way past that. :)
Ephesians 1:3
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."What does this really mean? Spiritual blessings could be thought of as peace, joy etc. God pours out his peace, joy and love on us. :) His grace abounds to us.
Psalm 103:12
"As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us."Our sins past, present and future do not keep God from loving us. Once we confess them they are forgotten. He does not remember them again! Amen. :)
Ephesians 3:17-19
"Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."The more we come to know God's love, the more we will be filled with God's fullness, because God is love. :)
Grace and peace be with you all! :)
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