{"id":1790,"date":"2023-01-15T21:26:32","date_gmt":"2023-01-15T20:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2023-01-15T21:26:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T20:26:34","slug":"1a-god-loves-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=1790","title":{"rendered":"1A God Loves You!"},"content":{"rendered":"

God loves you! This is the simple message at the heart of the Good News about Jesus. God loves you. God really cares about you. However tough life may be, whatever may be dragging you down or dragging you away from God, God is always there for you.
\nThis morning I want us all to see how just how much God loves us!
\nHave you ever felt loved? Have you experienced love from a parent or a friend or a spouse? I want us all to realise that God loves each one of us much more than that, more than any love we have ever experienced in our lives, more than we can possibly imagine.
\n\u201cSee what incredible love God has for us!\u201d (1 John 3:1 J.B. Phillips translation). God\u2019s love for us is wonderful, great, amazing, fantastic. I love our amazing children and I do my very best to love them as much as any father is able to love his children. Still, I could never love them one thousandth as much as God our heavenly Father loves us. Just think about that wonderful truth and believe it. Receive for yourself God\u2019s great incredible, amazing, fantastic, wonderful love. God loves you. You can say it for yourself, \u201cGod loves me.\u201d
\nLike the astonishing generosity of the father\u2019s love in Jesus\u2019s parable about the wayward prodigal son, God has welcomed us home. God shows us how much He loves us by the way He treats us and in all the blessings He pours out on us.
\nGod forgives our sins
\nJesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 2:1-2; 1 John 1:8-9). None of us deserve to be God\u2019s children. We all do and say things which hurt other people and cut us off from God. We could never earn or deserve forgiveness. Yet God forgives us.
\nWe have received God\u2019s free gift of eternal life
\nGod has given to every believer the free gift of life in all its fullness (1 John 5:11-13; 1 John 2:25). We have passed from death to life, and we now have eternal life which not even death can take away.
\nWe are God\u2019s children
\n\u201cSee what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!\u201d (1 John 3:1). The Almighty and Eternal God, Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, adopts us human beings, to become His sons and daughters. Consider how great God is and how small we are. Yet God has made you His child \u2013 this is how much God loves you.
\nWe enjoy the certainty of heaven
\nOther people don\u2019t understand what Christians are talking about when we say we are looking forward to heaven. There is more to life than this mortal existence. This life is just the introduction, the prelude. We are God\u2019s children already, but there is much, much more waiting for us. The blessings of heaven will be much more glorious than we can imagine \u2013 we will be with God forever! This is our Christian hope \u2013 not just a vague optimism but a happy certainty which rests on the promises of our God who always keeps His promises.
\nJesus laid down His life for us
\nJesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross so that we could be forgiven. If we want a measure of God\u2019s love, we just need to look at Jesus\u2019s dying in our place (1 John 4:9-10; 1 John 3:16). We use a symbol of a cross in letters, emails, text messages and Valentine\u2019s cards to say, \u201cI love you\u201d. The cross on which Jesus Christ died is God\u2019s sign, saying \u201cI love you\u201d to the world.
\n\u201cO the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!\u201d
\nGod wants every one of us to know how much He loves us with an amazing love which never lets us go. In our Bible reading we heard this.
\n\u201c\u2026 I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge \u2013 that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God\u201d (Eph 3:17-19).
\nGod wants us to do more than know about His love intellectually. He wants us to know His love in our own experience, to know His love in practice as well as in theory. God wants everybody to know His love in a living relationship with God our Father and with our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. God longs for us to be filled with His love to the measure of the fullness of God.
\nHow wide is God\u2019s love?
\nGod\u2019s love encompasses the whole world (John 3:16-17). God loves everyone equally. God does not reserve His love for a specific group of people. Things like race, gender, and social status are irrelevant. God loves all men and all women and all children equally (Gal 3:28).
\nGod\u2019s love is wide enough to embrace everybody \u2013 even people like you and me. We may feel we are unworthy of God\u2019s love. That is absolutely correct. Although we are totally undeserving, God loves us just the same. Some people find it hard to believe God loves them. They think they have gone too far away from God and His love could never stretch far enough to reach them. That is mistaken. God\u2019s love is wide enough to reach everybody.
\nHow long is God\u2019s Love?
\nWhat is the length of His love? God\u2019s love stretches from eternity to eternity. Neither the present nor the future can separate us from God\u2019s love. The Bible tells us God is love. Jesus is the same today, yesterday and forever. God does not change and His love for us will never change. We do not have to worry about God\u2019s love running out. God\u2019s love is forever and for always. It isn\u2019t only available on Sundays. There are no regular business hours for God\u2019s love. God\u2019s love is never out to lunch \u2013 it doesn\u2019t take holidays. God told His people, \u201cI have loved you with an everlasting love\u201d (Jer 31:3). God never gives up on us. God will never abandon us or let us down (Josh 1:5). God wants us to experience that love with Him forever.
\nIn difficult and painful times, we may think we are clinging on to God. The truth is it really is the other way around. It is God who is clinging on to us with a love which never lets us go. Some Christians worry because they think God has stopped loving them, but that is not the case. God\u2019s love will never let us go.
\nJohn 10 27 (Jesus said) My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father\u2019s hand.
\nWe have a personal relationship with God which will never end. Jesus has promised He will never cast us out or drive us away, but He will keep us safe into eternity (John 6:35, 37-40). We have been born again to a new life and we can never become \u201cunborn again\u201d. More than that, God is more than able to keep us safe in His love and He has promised to do so. . Nothing in the universe can separate us from God\u2019s love (Rom 8:28-39). He is greater than everything. God can and God will keep us safe. So, how long is God\u2019s love? It never ends.
\nHow high is God\u2019s love?
\n\u201cYour love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies\u201d (Psa 36:5). God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph 1:3) and He has raised us up and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ (Eph 2:6). We are citizens of heaven. In God, we can experience the richest, the highest, the purest, the finest love imaginable. God\u2019s love is completely free. Anybody who wants it can have all they want. But at the same time, there is always more of God\u2019s love to experience. C.S. Lewis gave a wonderful picture of heaven as ranges of mountains getting higher and higher nearer and nearer to God, with all the saints in glory moving on to the cry \u201cOnward and upward, onward and upward\u201d. However little or however much we have already experienced of God\u2019s love \u2013 there are always more heights to press on towards.
\nHow deep is God\u2019s love?
\nPerhaps depth refers to God\u2019s love being with us through even the most difficult of situations. That is certainly true. A Christian friend had a terrible time when her husband abandoned her with two young children. She wrote a book about her experiences and called it No pit too deep. It is true that there is no pit too deep for God\u2019s love to reach us. Whatever the depths we are trapped in \u2013 God\u2019s love will rescue us.
\nAt the same time, God\u2019s love reaches to the deepest parts of our being. God\u2019s love is deeper than our deepest secrets. It can penetrate the darkness of our worst fears. God\u2019s love reaches deep down inside us. Many people have deep hurts, things which have happened to us in the past which still leave echoes in the present, things which can lead to sadness or pain or depression or fears even if we think have forgotten them. God cares about how we feel just as much as about what we think. God wants to bring His healing and freedom and wholeness and peace to the deepest parts of our body, mind and spirit. However deeply we may be hurting, God\u2019s love is deep enough to reach our need. So wide, and long and high and deep.
\nGod invites each and every one of us to experience His amazing love, even today. All we need to do is put our trust in the heavenly Father who loves us more than we can possibly imagine. Ask and you will receive.
\n\u201c\u2026 I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge \u2013 that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God\u201d (Eph 3:17-19).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God loves you! This is the simple message at the heart of the Good News about Jesus. God loves you. God really cares about…<\/span><\/p>\n

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