God Loves Me

1 John 4:19, “We love him, because he first loved us.”
Does God really love us? That question is asked by those who may be going through some trial or crisis. Sometimes it is hard to understand just how much God does love us. How deep His abiding love is for His children. Our pride and fear causes us to not be able to grasp that God does love us just as we are. It is that pride and fear that the devil will use to make us doubt God’s love.
At times we all struggle with pride; we tend to believe that we have earned any love we receive. Pride whispers we are only loved when we are loveable. At other times we feel the tug of fear. Somewhere deep inside we feel there is that nagging fear that we really don’t deserve to be loved. Our motives don’t seem to be pure, and fear tells us we will be rejected if those motives are exposed. While we bask in the acceptance there is the fear of revealing that we are much less than what others think us to be?
Many times we all feel our relationship to God and His affection toward us is based on our performance. When we are saintly He loves us when we are sinners not so much. When we do well He loves us more and when we mess up His love is less. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is not for what we do or who we are that God loves us. Just as I am Jesus loves me and died so that I might live. God does not love us because we deserve it. He loves us in spite of who or what we are. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Romans 6:23 makes a clear statement of what we deserve, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
God loves us just as we are and His love will never fade. Just as a mother loves her child no matter if that child is clean or dirty so God loves us. When we make mistakes He loves us. When we are hurting He cares for us. When we fall He will pick us up.
It is because God loves us and what Jesus Christ did for us that we will always know God loves us. That simple truth shatters our pride and dispels our fears. So when we feel unloved consider this, no one is beyond the reach of God’s love.