God Loves You

As we get older, and as we look back over our lives, we are often better able to identify those events in our lives that have helped to shape our lives and our personalities. Those events in our lives that have helped to make us into the person that we have become.

Sometimes those influences have been very positive and have had a wonderful and enriching impact upon us. Sometimes those influences have been very negative and have made us fearful, emotionally crippled, and perhaps have even led us into self-destructive attitudes and behaviours.

As I have reflected upon my own life and personality, I have noticed three events in my early childhood, events that occurred before I turned eleven, that combined to seriously and negatively impact how I viewed myself, how I thought about myself, and, sadly, as a result, the consequences of these events have caused me great difficulties in my life and in my relationships.

The first of these began before I even started in school and went on for a couple of years. What happened is that my parents, for whatever reason, and I am sure that there was nothing malicious in this, but my parents began teasing me and telling me:

We found you under a rock.

I can't remember how many times they would tell me this:

We found you under a rock.

Of course later on when my older brother started saying this, he wasn't teasing – he was just being mean.

But imagine the impact on a four, five, or six-year-old when their parents tell them, “We found you under a rock". But, like I said, even though I am sure that there was no maliciousness involved on my parents’ part, what this does in the mind of a young boy is to say to them:

You don't belong.

You aren't 'one of us'.

You don't deserve to be here.

I well remember on a couple of occasions being close to tears after my parents told me that they had found me under a rock.

NEVER underestimate the power of your words to hurt, or also to build up, another human being. Is it any wonder that Jesus said in Matthew 12:36:

But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.

While Paul said in Ephesians 4:29:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

The second incident happened when I was about nine years old.

Dad was in the Air Force, and we lived on an Air Force base, and one day the Air Force decided that they would install Cable Television to every house on the base. Now we need to remember that Cable TV back then wasn't like it is today with Foxtel, Netflix, and whatever else.

Up until this time we only received three channels: ABC, NBC, and CBS from the bigger towns surrounding where we lived. But with the installation of Cable, we were going to receive an additional nine channels out of Los Angeles, but of these nine, three of them were going to be ABC, NBC, and CBS. But that still gave us six additional channels, five in English and one was sometimes in Spanish, other times in English. Of course, most of what these other six put on were either repeats of old TV shows or old movies.

So to do this the Air Force installed all of the wires throughout the base, but they didn't hook them up to the houses. The wires just "hung there", coiled up and secured to the telephone poles waiting for the installers to come and finish the work.

Across the street from us lived a couple of friends of ours, one boy was my age, the other was my brother's age, and we would often be in the same group playing together. However, their father decided that he wasn’t going to wait for the Air Force to come along and hook up the wire to his house, so he climbed up the pole, took the wire that was hanging down, and connected it to his house so that he had Cable TV weeks, maybe months, before the rest of us.

His sons, who were in the group that we were always playing in, were very excited because they could watch Superman in the afternoon on TV. So what they did is they went out and invited every boy in the group, just about every boy in the area to come to their house to watch Superman.

Well, everyone except my brother and myself.

So one afternoon, as we sat on the curb in front of our house looking directly across the street to their house, we could see all the boys in the neighbourhood trooping into their house to watch Superman, while we sat on the curb across the street because, of course, we hadn't been invited.

However, when their mother opened the door to allow the last of the boys into the house she looked up and saw my brother and I just sitting there on the other side of the street and she waved to us and invited us to "come inside and join the rest", and so we did.

We were very excited to be able to watch Superman, but when we came into the lounge room filled with boys, one of these boys, boys that I thought were my friends, one of these boys looked at me with a look that said:

What are you doing here?

I didn't invite you.

You don't belong.

You are only here because my mother let you in, but I don't want you.

Which is all pretty hard for an eight or nine-year-old boy to take.

The third incident occurred when I was ten, going on eleven. It was the summer of 1966. Dad was away working and my mother drove my brother and I down to the airport in Los Angeles to put us on a plane to Arizona where we were going to spend six weeks or so of the summer with one of Dad's younger brothers, but as we were sitting there on the plane my brother turned to me and said:

Our uncle didn't want to have you, he only wanted to have me, but Mom made him take you as well.

And of course, I believed him. But think about what my brother said meant to me.

Firstly, it meant that my mother didn't want me around, so she was getting rid of me (although, of course, it is quite likely that my brother wasn't telling me the truth).

Second, it meant that my uncle didn't really want me either, he was just putting up with me because my mother made him.

So here I was. Ten years old. Sitting on a plane. and nobody wanted me.

When all of these three incidents were combined together, they told me:

You don't belong.

You aren't wanted.

At best you are merely "tolerated".

And these things, these ideas and attitudes have been things that have gone with me throughout my life. These are the things that I have struggled with all my life.

But just before this trip to Arizona we started going to church, and we started singing songs that said:

Jesus loves me, this I know,

for the Bible tells me so.

We started hearing verses from the Bible that said things like:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.[1]

Verses like:

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.[2]

Verses like:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.[3]

You would think that in our "happily ever after" society that can solve all of the world's problems in a sixty-minute TV show, fourteen minutes of which are commercials, you would think that just hearing about the greatness of God's love would have solved everything. That it would have reversed all those negative self-images, but it didn't, for instead of the love of God overwhelming and transforming my understanding of myself, so that I saw myself as loved by God, accepted by God, and important to God, all of these influences in my life shaped and distorted my understanding of what the love of God truly meant.

I saw myself as that little boy sitting on the kerbside and allowed into God's house to watch Superman not because I was wanted, but simply because I was felt sorry for.

I saw myself as "tolerated" because God felt obliged to take me in because Jesus had said:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.[4]

And, because Jesus said it, God had no choice, and so God grudgingly let me come in.

Further, because of what I heard our preachers saying, although my mother insists that this wasn't so, but because of what I heard and how I interpreted it all, it was clear that:

God was a God of wrath.
God was angry with me.
God was out to get me.
God would prefer to act in judgement upon me.
But, thankfully, through his death, Jesus stopped this angry God from "zapping" me, and even though I was forgiven, somehow, deep down, God still had it in for me and if I stepped out of line even once, then POW, God would get me.

Did I have a messed-up view of God or what, and this messed up view was even though the Bible is abundantly clear that God loves me. God loves you. God loves us.

Even though we sing "Jesus Loves Me", the New Testament talks more about how God loves us than it does about how Jesus loves us. In fact, the Bible only mentions the love of Jesus on a few occasions.[5]

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is 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.[6]

Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.[7]

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.[8]

But the love of God is mentioned far more often.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.[9]

We know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you.[10]

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.[11]

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love.[12]

These verses don’t even begin to include all of the Old Testament passages which talk about "the steadfast love of the Lord".

But with my somewhat warped view of God, which was the result of a warped view of myself, which was the result of the impact of the words and actions of others upon me, do you know what I did in the face of all of this? When I read John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

When I read this, I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to come into this world to give me life". Which isn't what John 3:16 says.

When I read Romans 5:8:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to rescue from the wrath of God". Which isn't what Romans 5:8 says.

When I read 1 John 4:9:

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to come into this world in order to give me new life". Which isn't what 1 John says.

You can see how a messed up view of myself, led to a messed up view of God, which led to a very messed up reading of God's written word, and it was this very messed up view of both myself and God that ultimately led me into my own fight with anorexia, because, of course, God could only really love me if I earned that love by starving myself.

I don't know when, or even how it happened, but I eventually began to read the Bible for what it actually said, and not for what I thought it said, and I began to realise that God the Father himself really does love me. So when we read in John 14:2 where Jesus said:

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

It isn't as if Jesus is bringing his friends home to stay, much to the disgust and annoyance of his Father. Instead, God the Father has willingly opened up his house to all who will come to him because he loves them.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son,[13] it is truly God the Father himself who is the loving father who waits, and longs for his wayward sons and daughters to return home. It is God the Father himself who lovingly welcomes us back home. Why? Because it is God the Father himself who loves us.

We read in John 16:27 where Jesus said:

The Father himself loves you.

I don't care who you are. I don't care what your circumstances in life have been. I don't care what other people have told you about yourself, or what you have come to believe about yourself, this one truth is absolutely, totally, and eternally certain:

God loves you.

God loves you and God demonstrated once and for all just how much he loves you when God, in love, sent his son, Jesus Christ, into this world, and when God, in love, sent Jesus to the cross, and when God, in love, had Jesus die for our sins, carrying our punishment so that we might have new life. That is just how much God loves us.

So if life brings you to the point of despair, or if other people try to make you feel worthless, useless, unwanted, or unneeded. Or if you get down on yourself and fill your thoughts with negative ideas that talk about how valueless and pathetic you are: then stop, and remind yourselves of this one, glorious, eternal, and unchangeable fact: "God loves you", and God has forever proven to you the greatness, the depth, the wonder of his love for you in the person, work, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is why Paul prays in Ephesians 3:16-19:

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being firmly established and grounded in love.

I pray that you may have the power 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, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Because whether we talk about the "love of God" or the "love of Christ" it is so immense that:

Nothing can shake it.

Nothing can stop it.

Nothing can alter the love that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have for you.

As Paul said in Romans 8:31-39:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced 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.

Why is all this true? Because God loves you!

Now, at the moment we are in the middle of a sermon series on "Knowing and Doing the Will of God". But what does God's love for us, what does Christ's love for us have to do with either knowing or doing the will of God? Why is it important for us to know, to believe, and to have confidence in the fact that God loves us?

Because if God ever leads you into a task, a place, or into a situation – it is because God loves you. God isn't trying to get rid of you. God isn't trying to push you aside. God isn't trying to get you out of the way because you are too much trouble – things that we might think about ourselves.

Instead, God loves you and he wants to use you in that task, that place where you are, in order to accomplish his purposes in the world. His purpose of sharing Christ with others. His purpose of transforming your character so that you become more like Jesus.

If, as God leads us into his will and purposes, we find that we are mocked by others. Ridiculed. Belittled. Hated. Rejected. Despised, even by family and friends, we should never allow the response of other people to discourage us from continuing in the will, the way, and the purposes of God, because we know that God loves us.

Because we know that God loves us, we also know that continuing in his path, his will, his ways, and accomplishing his purposes, is of far greater importance than the responses and attitudes of others. For the Lord Jesus himself went through all of this, but he constantly knew and relied upon the love of God, as John said in 1 John 4:16:

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

Likewise, if, in doing the will of God, if, in following God's purposes for your life: hardship, sorrow, pain, tragedy, or suffering comes your way; if while we are doing the will of God, if while we are following the purposes of God, our life seems to be filled with misery, strife, struggles, and challenges, we should never stop and say, "God has stopped loving me", because the Bible clearly tells us that:

[Nothing] in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[14]

God has forever settled the fact of his love for us in the cross of Jesus Christ, and being convinced of his love, (for nothing can separate us from the love of God), being convinced of his love we continue to do his will, we walk with him in faith, secure in the knowledge that he will never leave us or forsake us. Secure in the knowledge that God loves us! As the Psalm writer said in Psalm 26:3:

For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.

So when Jesus says that the greatest command is that we:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.[15]

It isn't because God is on an ego trip and selfishly demands our affection.

Instead, it is because God already loves us, and he knows that the only way that we can live and become all that we should be as human beings is if we love him as he already loves us, as 1 John 4:19 says:

We love because he first loved us.

God loves you. God will always love you, and because God will always love you, we know that we can trust him, walk with him, live for him, and follow him.

No matter where.

No matter what.

Praise be to God!

Amen!

[1] John 3:16

[2] 1 John 3:1

[3] Romans 5:8

[4] Matthew 11:28

[5] c/f Romans 8:35; 2 Corinthians 5:14; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:19; 5:2, 25; Philippians 2:1; 1 Timothy 1:14; Revelation 1:5. There are also references to specific individuals in John 11:5; 14:1, 23; 19:26; 21:7.

[6] Galatians 2:20

[7] Ephesians 5:2

[8] Ephesians 5:25

[9] John 3:16

[10] 1 Thessalonians 1:4

[11] 1 John 4:9-11

[12] 1 John 4:16. See also Romans 1:7; 5:5, 8; 8:39; 2 Corinthians 13:11, 13; Ephesians 5:1; 6:23; Colossians 3:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:16; 3:5; 1 John 3:1.

[13] Luke 15:11-32

[14] Romans 8:39

[15] Matthew 22:37

God Loves You

As we get older, and as we look back over our lives, we are often better able to identify those events in our lives that have helped to shape our lives and our personalities. Those events in our lives that have helped to make us into the person that we have become.

Sometimes those influences have been very positive and have had a wonderful and enriching impact upon us. Sometimes those influences have been very negative and have made us fearful, emotionally crippled, and perhaps have even led us into self-destructive attitudes and behaviours.

The first of these began before I even started in school and went on for a couple of years. What happened is that my parents, for whatever reason, and I am sure that there was nothing malicious in this, but my parents began teasing me and telling me:

We found you under a rock.

I can't remember how many times they would tell me this:

We found you under a rock.

Of course later on when my older brother started saying this, he wasn't teasing – he was just being mean.

But imagine the impact on a four, five, or six-year-old when their parents tell them, “We found you under a rock". But, like I said, even though I am sure that there was no maliciousness involved on my parents’ part, what this does in the mind of a young boy is to say to them:

You don't belong.

You aren't 'one of us'.

You don't deserve to be here.

I well remember on a couple of occasions being close to tears after my parents told me that they had found me under a rock.

NEVER underestimate the power of your words to hurt, or also to build up, another human being. Is it any wonder that Jesus said in Matthew 12:36:

But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.

While Paul said in Ephesians 4:29:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

The second incident happened when I was about nine years old.

Dad was in the Air Force, and we lived on an Air Force base, and one day the Air Force decided that they would install Cable Television to every house on the base. Now we need to remember that Cable TV back then wasn't like it is today with Foxtel, Netflix, and whatever else.

So to do this the Air Force installed all of the wires throughout the base, but they didn't hook them up to the houses. The wires just "hung there", coiled up and secured to the telephone poles waiting for the installers to come and finish the work.

His sons, who were in the group that we were always playing in, were very excited because they could watch Superman in the afternoon on TV. So what they did is they went out and invited every boy in the group, just about every boy in the area to come to their house to watch Superman.

Well, everyone except my brother and myself.

So one afternoon, as we sat on the curb in front of our house looking directly across the street to their house, we could see all the boys in the neighbourhood trooping into their house to watch Superman, while we sat on the curb across the street because, of course, we hadn't been invited.

However, when their mother opened the door to allow the last of the boys into the house she looked up and saw my brother and I just sitting there on the other side of the street and she waved to us and invited us to "come inside and join the rest", and so we did.

We were very excited to be able to watch Superman, but when we came into the lounge room filled with boys, one of these boys, boys that I thought were my friends, one of these boys looked at me with a look that said:

What are you doing here?

I didn't invite you.

You don't belong.

You are only here because my mother let you in, but I don't want you.

Which is all pretty hard for an eight or nine-year-old boy to take.

Our uncle didn't want to have you, he only wanted to have me, but Mom made him take you as well.

And of course, I believed him. But think about what my brother said meant to me.

Firstly, it meant that my mother didn't want me around, so she was getting rid of me (although, of course, it is quite likely that my brother wasn't telling me the truth).

Second, it meant that my uncle didn't really want me either, he was just putting up with me because my mother made him.

So here I was. Ten years old. Sitting on a plane. and nobody wanted me.

When all of these three incidents were combined together, they told me:

You don't belong.

You aren't wanted.

At best you are merely "tolerated".

And these things, these ideas and attitudes have been things that have gone with me throughout my life. These are the things that I have struggled with all my life.

But just before this trip to Arizona we started going to church, and we started singing songs that said:

Jesus loves me, this I know,

for the Bible tells me so.

We started hearing verses from the Bible that said things like:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.[1]

Verses like:

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.[2]

Verses like:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.[3]

I saw myself as that little boy sitting on the kerbside and allowed into God's house to watch Superman not because I was wanted, but simply because I was felt sorry for.

I saw myself as "tolerated" because God felt obliged to take me in because Jesus had said:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.[4]

And, because Jesus said it, God had no choice, and so God grudgingly let me come in.

Further, because of what I heard our preachers saying, although my mother insists that this wasn't so, but because of what I heard and how I interpreted it all, it was clear that:

God was a God of wrath.

God was angry with me.

God was out to get me.

God would prefer to act in judgement upon me.

But, thankfully, through his death, Jesus stopped this angry God from "zapping" me, and even though I was forgiven, somehow, deep down, God still had it in for me and if I stepped out of line even once, then POW, God would get me.

Did I have a messed-up view of God or what, and this messed up view was even though the Bible is abundantly clear that God loves me. God loves you. God loves us.

Even though we sing "Jesus Loves Me", the New Testament talks more about how God loves us than it does about how Jesus loves us. In fact, the Bible only mentions the love of Jesus on a few occasions.[5]

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is 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.[6]

Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.[7]

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.[8]

But the love of God is mentioned far more often.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.[9]

We know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you.[10]

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love.[12]

These verses don’t even begin to include all of the Old Testament passages which talk about "the steadfast love of the Lord".

But with my somewhat warped view of God, which was the result of a warped view of myself, which was the result of the impact of the words and actions of others upon me, do you know what I did in the face of all of this? When I read John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

When I read this, I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to come into this world to give me life". Which isn't what John 3:16 says.

When I read Romans 5:8:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to rescue from the wrath of God". Which isn't what Romans 5:8 says.

When I read 1 John 4:9:

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

I thought, "isn't it good that Jesus loves me enough to come into this world in order to give me new life". Which isn't what 1 John says.

I don't know when, or even how it happened, but I eventually began to read the Bible for what it actually said, and not for what I thought it said, and I began to realise that God the Father himself really does love me. So when we read in John 14:2 where Jesus said:

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?