God Can’t Love Me Any More Than He Already Does

I recently posted a Facebook status, sharing with my world of over 800 Facebook friends, that I was trying to comprehend the truth that there is nothing I can possibly to do make God love me more than He already does. Absolutely, positively nothing.

I received a fair share of comments. Some people encouraged me to keep letting the truth sink in. Others identified with the difficulty of truly living in light of this truth.

Why? Why is it so hard for us to receive the depth and the riches of God’s love, which He so generously lavishes on us? (Don’t answer that. I know that there are a million and one reasons.) The fact of the matter is, whatever it is that is keeping us from experiencing God’s love to the fullest must be handled appropriately, as in destroyed, obliterated, crushed.

For me, I know if I work at showing more kindness, serving more hours, coming up with better ideas, being a better friend, bearing more fruit, avoiding failure, and on and on, that somehow this will help me earn and keep God’s love and favor. Wrong.

One of the best decisions I made today was to become a mass transit commuter for the first time. I took the bus! People have laughed at me all day long for doing such a “crazy” thing, but I know that if I want to be more of a reader, I will have to spend some time on a bus with a good book. I am so thankful I did just that today, for I was able to read a section on Joyce Meyer’s book Battlefield of the Mind about having the mind of Christ. Good idea for a girl who wants to explore what it means to have transformed thoughts.

In the particular chapter I enjoyed today, the author stresses the importance of being “God-loves-me”-minded. She writes, “If we never meditate on His love for us, we will not experience it.” I don’t know about you, but I want to know and experience God’s love for me in a mighty and powerful way that changes my life as a result.

While I could continue on with my ramblings on the matter, I shall let God do the talking and share just a few of the prominent verses about God’s extraordinary love for us. And you know what? I think one of these is going to go on my bathroom mirror…just so I am sure not to forget!

…God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins….So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.
1 John 4:8b-10,16

We love because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure 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.
Romans 8: 35, 37-39

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

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—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.
Psalm 36:5

For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.
Psalm 100:5

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Psalm 145:8