The Truth #2

The second truth from the book Lies Women Believe is that God loves me and wants me to have His best. God loves us because He IS love. There is nothing we can do to make him love us more or to make him love us less. There is nothing we can do to earn or deserve His love. Because He loves us, He wants us to experience all the joy in life He designed us to know.

Romans 8:32 says "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" 1 John 4:10: "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Psalm 21: 6 "Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence." (also see Romans 8: 35-39, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 3:17-19, and Psalm 21: 2-3)

I guess I've always known that God loves me, but I think I often forget how much he truly loves me or question whether or not he really likes me. The thought of God loving me personally and being concerned with my joy is hard for me to understand sometimes. Lately a lot of my studies have been more about God giving people suffering and trials to make them more like Christ, so it was good for me to be reminded that God also gives us joy.

The key is knowing where this joy comes from, because there can be joy even in suffering and trials. Psalm 21:6 has the answer, "the joy of your presence." When we're in God's presence, we should be filled with joy. And since God dwells in us through his Holy Spirit, we should always be glad with the joy of his presence. Again, I think this is something I often take for granted as I just go through day to day life. And so my prayer needs to be that of Ephesians 3: 17-19 "And 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 his love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."