God Loves You
A few years ago I sat in a coffee shop in a small city where my husband was appointed pastor of a church. Like every city I have ever lived in, the population of this city represented people of different ethnicities, different economic statuses, different personal styles, and states of physical and mental well-being. It goes without saying we human beings are a diverse bunch, and even if we recognize one another as being visually similar, it’s difficult to have a true and total sense of another person’s inner life and heart. We see this in 1 Samuel 16:7 when God says to Samuel
“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” God knows we are individual universes of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Psalm 139 tells us that the number of thoughts God devotes to each of us would outnumber the grains of sand! I can’t fathom that there are 100, 500, or even 1000 things to think about me much less more thoughts than there are grains of sand on a beach. I sat in that coffee shop waiting for my youngest son to finish his violin lesson a couple doors down, and I watched people walk by the window and thought about all of the thoughts flowing from the Father in heaven towards our feeble souls here on earth.
As all manner of people walked past I was overwhelmed with God’s pure affection and delight in each of them. God seemed to highlight something he loved in each person.
From businessmen and women, to prostitutes and drug addicts— I watched them all walk past in the perfect, late-afternoon, autumn sun and knew without a shadow of a doubt that God ecstatically loved each one of them. It’s interesting for me to consider what someone might think observing me at that window table quietly crying. A reasonable assumption would be that I was sad, but nothing could have been further from the truth! In fact I was overjoyed not just because I experienced a small fraction of God’s love for us human beings, but also because I learned something about his love in that moment that never occurred to me before: God’s love is imbued with his power and authority. God’s love, unlike human love, is full to the brim with his ability.
Love outside of God may communicate affection, emotional intentions and desires, like comfort and promises of fidelity, but our love does not save, nor does it heal. It is only a shadow or evidence of something greater that can only truly be known in Christ. We know from 1 John 4:16, that “God is love” (emphasis mine), and that any semblance of love expressed by a human being is evidence of God for if we believe that the origin of love is God then there can be no true love apart from him. 1 John 4 goes on to say in verses 16 and 17 that when we abide in God that God’s love is perfected in us. God’s work of perfecting his love in us means that we can grow in grace towards both our brothers and sisters in Christ, and those who don’t yet know they are meant to be children of God. The Father’s love alive within us gives us prophetic wisdom to see people and circumstances as he sees them: free of fear and condemnation and full of the hope of redemption.
This is why telling someone that God loves them is powerful! Isaiah 55:11 tells us the words that go out from God’s mouth will not return void,
“so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
This is one of God’s promises to us! We who have been given the mind of Christ, and are the habitation of God, should seek God’s heart and wisdom for as many people as God puts in our path and confidently sow seeds of God’s love no matter the reaction or response. His love is able to do immeasurably more than we can think to ask or even imagine.