“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” I John 4:10

Our love for God

Do you love God? Have you ever thought about why you love God? Is it just because you are a good person that you naturally love God? Did you suddenly say, one day, “I think I want to love God”? The love you have for God in your relationship with Him was not initiated by you. God started it. The very fact that you love God is proof that God’s spirit came and awakened you. “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.”(Colossians 2:13) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”(Romans 5:8) Last time I checked, it is pretty difficult for sinners and dead people to love God. So, any love that you have for God is because He enabled you and instigated it by His love. Later on in 1John 4 it says that, “We love, because He first loved us.”

God’s Love

Have you ever wondered, maybe because of hard circumstances, “does God really love me?” Have you come to a point in your life where it is hard to see God’s love for you. The Enemy can quickly play off your circumstances and get you to focus your eyes on the winds and waves crashing around you. They scream things like, “Does God really love you? If God loved you… You wouldn’t be going through this hard time, you wouldn’t have lost your job, your Mom and Dad would still be together…etc.

Sometimes in life the hardships come in like clouds that block out the warmth and brightness of the sun. The reality is God still loves you even in the cloudiest and darkest days of your life. How can you be sure of that? God sent His Son to earth to die on your behalf. Christ satisfied the punishment of your sins. Any doubt that God loves you was settled at the cross.

[For some great ‘extra credit’ on this topic look up the song “Settled At the Cross” by Phil Mehrens, Lee Black, and Lynn Rowel.]

-Nathan Mellas