The greatest happiness of life is the conviction we are loved.
The world has a view of love which is understood to be: an intense felling of deep affection or fondness for a person or thing. A great liking. This meaning is taken from the Latin and Greek words – eros and amore’. It is speaking essentially of a “love of the worthy”.
Love is also mentioned 735 times in the Bible. The word love in the bible however has a different definition. It is when someone is loved no matter what, even if totally unworthy!
1 John 3:16 explains love this way, “This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us”.
If we speak of God; of His greatness, His power and His righteousness, but omit to say He is Love we miss what matters most of all!
He is Love and the most important thing we can grasp is to know and experience that love for ourselves. God encourages us to earnestly pursue and seek to know His love and to make it our aim and greatest quest. (1 Corinthians 14:1)
It’s a love which holds nothing back, a love which is always giving, a love which overlooks cultural, economic and class boundaries. It’s a love demonstrated in action when Jesus gave His life for all mankind on a wooden cross.
Look for yourself at Jesus as He loves the women who was sentenced to death for adultery (John 8:3-11), or the raising from the dead of the only son of a widow (Luke 7:11-15). Of the acceptance of Zaccheus, a previously despised thieving, little man (Luke 19:2-10), or the demon possessed man who lived in the cemetery, whom Jesus loved and set free to live a new life (Mark 5:2).
Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. How he loved then, is still how he loves now. It doesn’t matter if you think yourself invisible to everyone else, He still sees you. It doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t done, how successful you are, or if you feel a complete failure. It matters not! Jesus loves you.
“Love was demonstrated to us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.(Romans 5:8)
The world’s “love system” says you are lovable only if you are worthy in some way. You are worth loving only if you are good or successful enough and are someone others aspire to be, then and only then does the world says you are worthy of loving. But if you are broken, ugly, bitter or twisted; if you are unpopular, have a past or issues or seem invisible to others then who would bother loving you?
I say that the world’s love system is failing, it is messed up and it is messing people up. But God’s “love system” is fully intact and transforming. If we believe that or we desperately want that type of love then we each has a decision to make. Which love will we seek after and earnestly long to know with all our hearts? God’s type of love or the worlds?
I’m not talking about just a head knowledge of love either. Of a “Oh yes, Jesus Loves me”. But the deep, transforming knowledge and peace that regardless of what you do or how you perform, you know you are deeply loved. As you experience this love you will then also be empowered to love yourself and others around you with God’s love as it is released in your heart and life. And that kind of love changes everything – it changes us, our relationships and our future. That kind of love has the potential to change the world.
Jesus says you can know that kind of love. He says “You will find me if you seek me, when you search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Today I encourage you to really seek to know and live in God’s love for you, and that as you do you will have the power to understand how wide, long, high and deep His love is, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-19)
Prayer: Lord please help me to know what real love feels and looks like so that I don’t settle for anything less than your best for me. In Jesus name Amen.