Just let Him love you

All my life I have known God loved me. I was one of those who was saved, baptized and repented of all my sin before the doctor delivered me. Born to Baptist missionaries in Israel, I was the typical pastor kid who spent more time at church than I did my own home. And still, I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the way, I missed something.

I missed that God likes me. I missed that God enjoys me. I missed that God’s heart affections are for me. I just missed it. Maybe it was because I heard “God loves you” all my life, or maybe I just grew accustomed to “God’s love for me” that it never sank in.

God can work in funny ways. In my life, He gets creative getting through to me. He tried to draw my heart gently at first, but I wouldn’t listen. I was too independent. Then He began to use circumstances in my life to get His message of love through to me. I perked up a bit, but not my full attention. Then He broke me, sweetly and gently broke me of myself. He did it because He loves me and knows that He is the best for me. By taking away all that I held more important than Him, He showed me I had put others before Him.

Not until I placed Him first in my heart would my life begin to fall into place.

This God that we serve, that we love, that we have claimed allegiance to, is a God who loves so much more than we will be able to fully grasp in our lives. The Cross, the Christ, atonement, redemption… there’s so much to God.

God likes you. It’s true, He really does. He is like a good friend that likes you no matter what you’ve done. He is like a faithful friend that won’t forsake or leave you because of something you may have done, or didn’t do.

How hard it is to comprehend… Our chains really are gone and we have been set free. God really has ransomed us and His mercy has enveloped us and we have been washed clean.

He is familiar with our ways and has numbered the hairs on our head. We were made in His image and He knew us before we were born. He took the time to write our days in His book and knit us together in the womb. It is His desire to lavish His love on us for no other reason than He called us His own. He has a plan for us with a future and a hope and His love is everlasting.

He likes us. He rejoices over us with singing and His thoughts towards us are greater than the sands of the seashore. He can never stop being good to us because we are His treasured possession.

He longs to show us great and marvelous things and all He asks in return, is to love Him back.

He likes us. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think or imagine and one day He really will wipe away every tear from our eyes. The amazing thing is that when we delight ourselves in Him, He gives us the desires of our hearts. He does it this way because He knows that He is the very best for us. He is our greatest encourager, our greatest comforter, our greatest hope.

It doesn’t matter what you may have done in the past. It doesn’t matter if you walked closely with Jesus for ten years and then messed up one night. We can always go back to Him and He will always redeem us to Himself. There are consequences for sin, but those consequences do not include Jesus condemning us for our failures and not letting us back into fellowship with Him when we fall.

The next time you think you can’t go back to Jesus, remember the story of John Newton. John Newton was a slave ship captain. He literally bought human beings, transported them across the world, didn’t care if they died along the way and would sell them as animals to the highest bidder. He built his life and livelihood on the destruction of human lives.

When John Newton met Jesus, he repented of his sin and was so enraptured by the grace of God that He was able to write:

“The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures
His will, my shield and portion be as long as life endures.
My chains are gone, I’ve been set free
My God my savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending Love, Amazing Grace”

John Newton got a revelation of the goodness and grace of God and allowed God to forgive him, though at times he found it hard to forgive himself. We have to let the grace of God sink into our bones. We have to let the grace of God reach our innermost being and transform us. When we have a right understanding of God’s love for us, His grace towards us, and his song over us, we can be set free.

Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. Jesus proved God’s love.

We have to let Him in. We can’t keep Jesus at a distance. We have to let Him love us and let Him hold us like a good parent wants simply to hold and love their child.

Can you let Him in? I know it’s hard. It was hard for me. I didn’t want to let Him in because I thought He would somehow reject me if I admitted to the dark places of my heart, but all along, the whole time, Jesus already knew me fully, even the junk in my life, and He loved me still.

We simply must believe in the love of Jesus. We are so used to conditional love in our relationships with people that we can believe God is like that too.

The truth is; He isn’t.

We are utterly loved, perfectly, fully. Life is hard and has so many disappointments and setbacks, but God will be there. He really does love us. He really does like us. We really are His favorite. It doesn’t matter what we have done whether God likes us more or less. It’s not about works. It’s not about being good before He will love us. It’s about letting God love us as we are right now.

Now, you are perfectly loved. Let go. Just let Him love you.