Word of Encouragement Devotional: What Does God's Love Feel Like?

God’s love is not like any other love that you have or will experience from a person. God’s love is unconditional, that means you don’t have to do anything to experience His love. I know that is hard to believe since as humans we do not treat each other with this kind of love, but God is not like humans.

But can you actually feel God’s love?

 God’s love can be felt, not like a human feeling but through His relentless pursuit of an intimate relationship He desires with you. God not only wants to have a relationship with you, He wants you to know that He never gives up on you. People give up on you, they betray you, reject you, abuse you, and use you. God’s love never does anything to hurt you. I know that may seem hard to believe if you have experienced a lot of trouble and heartache in your life, but God always wants the best for you. God will never turn His back on you. Even if you turn your back on God, He will still come after you. You can shut God out of your life, and that will make things harder to experience Him, but He waits for you to say, “come back into my life.” When you invite God in, He comes running like a parent does when they hear their newborn baby crying.

Reflect:

Do you have trouble feeling God’s love? Why? Now ask God to lavish His love upon you today and then anticipate how God will love on you. Understand that God’s love is unconditional for His children, just like as a parent you never stop loving your children even when they do things that are not good. God, is a good, good Father. He desires to love you and for you to know His love. You don’t have to wait to get everything perfect in your life to experience God’s love, He wants to love you right where you are at.

Meditate:

But you O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Psalm 86:15

Word of Encouragement: Counselor’s Corner Does God Really Love Me?

Word of Encouragement: Counselor’s Corner

Does God Really Love Me?

If you do not understand God’s love for you, it will be difficult to grow in relationship with Him and others. Oftentimes, the way we view our parents is how we view God. If we were abandoned by our parents, abused by them, or rejected by them; this will cause us to believe God is the same way. We can attend church for years and never know the Father’s love.

Perhaps you were raised in a home that taught legalistic religion, basically this means doing good works and following rules verses having a personal relationship with Christ. We especially view God the way our earthly fathers were with us. If we were ruled with an “iron-fist” or shown no grace and mercy by our fathers, we can easily believe God will do the same with us.

God’s love is not the same as human love.

You may feel not good enough to receive God’s love. In your mind, you have sinned too much or done too much for God to embrace you. Maybe you struggle with believing that God cares about what happens to you, and you are being punished somehow for your past mistakes.

Believing that God loves you is not necessarily a feeling but a choice. A choice to believe what God says about you, not what others have said or done to you. Forgive your parents or caretakers if they did not represent God to you in a loving way, it could be that they were not shown how too. God loves you right where you are at, and He is ever working on you. God is not waiting for you to change until you can accept His love or even receive Salvation.

Believe what the Word of God says about His love:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved…Ephesians 2:4-5

But you, O Lord, are merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Psalm 86:15

Don’t let the enemy lie to you by telling you that because bad things have happened to you, or that God has not answered your prayers that He does not love you. You may wonder, “where was God when I was being abused”, or “ how can He love me if all these horrific things occurred?” I have wrestled with these questions before, but I realize now that we live in a fallen world and sometimes tragedy happens.

Does God care about the suffering that you have gone through? Yes! This can be hard to digest if you have been severely wounded in life. The people who were supposed to love and protect you, were the ones who hurt you the most. God never wanted this type of pain to happen to you. Take some time to reflect on God’s love is not like human love. God never gives up on us, He gave His life for us so we could live in eternity, and has great mercy towards us. God’s love is unconditional and He will never abandon nor forsake us.

God wants you to know today that He sees you and that HE LOVES YOU!

What experiences have kept you from receiving God’s love?

Counselor’s Corner: Who Does God Say That I Am?

When you do not know what your identity is in Christ, or what God says about you; you believe the lies that the enemy dishes out to you. Have you ever wondered why some Christians live in defeat? This can be contributed to not knowing or believing what your new identity in Christ is.

If you have struggled with knowing that God loves you and knowing your worth and value, take the time and read and meditate what the truth says. The truth can be found by not only reading the Bible, but believing what it says. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32

Reflect and ponder: Do you know your new identity on Christ?

Counselor’s corner:

The following truths are what God says about you.

·        You are loved by God. Not because of what you have done or have not done. The Bible tells us that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

·        You are a new creation. If anyone is in Christ, old things have passed away and you are a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17.

·        You are a member of the body of Christ. You belong to a new family, one that will be with you in eternity. 1 Corinthians 12:27

·        You are a friend of God. Jesus said, “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15

·        You are free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2. The penalty for sin before was death, but now through the shed blood of Christ; we can be free from death.

·        You are born of God and the evil one does not touch you. 1 John 5:18.

·        You are holy and without blame before Him in love. Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:16.

·        You are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Ephesians 2:10.

·        You are a joint heir with Jesus, sharing His inheritance with Him. Romans 8:17.

·        You are a temple of God. His spirit and His life lives in you. 1 Corinthians 6:19.

·        You have been redeemed and forgiven. Colossians 1:14.

·        You have been adopted by God as His child. Ephesians 1:5. It does not matter what family you were born into, you have been adopted by God and have a new bloodline.

This list is nowhere near exhaustive. Read the Bible for yourself, and believe what God says about you. It does not matter what you think of yourself, what others think of you, but what God says about you. No matter your background, if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, these truths apply to you! You are no longer a sinner wrapped in shame and condemnation, so stop seeing yourself that way. If you are still thinking about the things you did in the past, realize that is a plan of the enemy to keep you from knowing your true identity.

If your sins have been removed from the record, deleted; then why keep beating yourself up for things you have been forgiven for?

A key to breakthrough from living defeated is believing that you are a new creation in Jesus Christ, instead of the person you used to be.