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Is God Love

How Much does God Love Me?

By Grantley Morris

Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You

Discovering God’s Love for You

How to Know if God Loves You

I sometimes wonder if attempting to describe the most magnificent sunset to someone blind from birth would be easier than making this introduction believable to the disillusioned millions of us whose taste of love has so far been largely limited to human imperfections. The bitter disappointment of being let down by humans causes many of us to lose hope of ever finding genuine, selfless love of Godlike proportions – even in God himself. At least until crushed by the harsh reality of human failings, however, it seems everyone longs to be in love.

Both thrilling and fulfilling, being in love is a continual source of wonder and delight, bringing joy and contentment like nothing else. It makes life worth living; transforming a drab, dour existence into sheer exhilaration. It is what we were made for, even though human relationships allow only elusive, often frustrating, glimpses of it. God alone has the divine perfection we crave in a lover, but what holds us back is the unfounded fear that God’s love for us is shallow – more aloof and clinical than the red-hot passion of someone exciting who is head-over-heels in love with us.

It seems too good to be believable, but the mind-boggling truth is that the awesome God of Perfection, for whom nothing is impossible, is more passionately in love with you – yes, you – than any human has ever felt for anyone. No one can expect to feel convinced of this in just a short webpage, but we have to start somewhere.

We know that fervent love for God and love for all humanity is God’s top priority for us (Mark 12:28-31) and yet we struggle to love as we should. This is largely because we get things back to front. We try to love in order to win God’s love. That’s like trying to drive a car without fueling it. What starts the whole process is a revelation of how stupendously in love with us God already is.

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

The key to falling in love with God – and staying in love with him and loving humanity as well – is found not so much in trying to love but in simply dwelling on God’s love for us. Discovering and clinging to the truth that God is thrilled with us continually draws us to him and transforms us. It is also the secret to victorious living. As I have written elsewhere:

When feeling defeated, one of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents runs off and falls, what’s the first thing he does? He looks to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, should run into Daddy’s arms for the comfort you need. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively shrink from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arm’s length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort.

Your whole life will light up when you know in every fiber of your being that Almighty God is, to use one of the closest human expressions, madly in love with you.

Nothing is so exciting, fulfilling and heart-warming as being loved by the most wonderful Person in the universe.

No one understands you like your Maker. He alone has been with you every moment from your conception. No one feels your every pain and delights in your happiness like God. No one longs to exalt you and shower you with gifts as much as him.

More than anything else in the universe, glimpsing the immensity of God’s personal, passionate love for you will flood your life with peace and security. Thereafter, neither death nor disaster could ever rob you of the eternal love throbbing within you. Suddenly life will have meaning like never before.

Yes, the God with powers beyond our wildest dreams delights in you, loving you more passionately than the most devoted mother or proudest father or grandparent, and more than any starry-eyed lover has ever loved.

And yet God’s spiritual enemies are relentlessly scheming ways to undermine your awareness of the purity and intensity of God’s boundless love for you. Every Christian on this planet is subjected to this repeated assault. Remaining continually conscious of God’s love for us and convinced of its magnitude is one of life’s greatest and relentless challenges.

The groundless fear that the loving, forgiving Lord frowns on us is like an oppressive fog. It saps us of enthusiasm and weakens our eagerness to cooperate with God in receiving the wonderful things our loving Lord longs for us to enjoy. Contrast this with the assurance that the King of all kings is thrilled with you; that there is a real sense in which you are the center of his universe and that he is selflessly devoted to maximizing your eternal happiness. A glimpse of God’s never-ending love for you will spur you to victory in every area of your life. Your faith will soar and you’ll be inspired to mind-boggling heights of achievement.

So bookmark or note the web address of this page to ensure you won’t lose it and then pamper yourself by exploring every link below. Each is prayerfully crafted to intensify your awareness of, and enjoyment of, the most exquisite love anyone could ever dream of. As you proceed through the links you will find comfort and help in squashing your doubts that God sees you as special and is in love with you; doubts that God is lovable and doubts that he is truly good and kind and selfless and fair.

You wouldn’t believe how excited I am about taking you on life’s most thrilling and fulfilling adventure. If, however, I wanted to help you experience the heights of playing sport, as much as I might wish to do it all for you, much would depend upon you as to how far you go. So it is with life’s greatest adventure: I’ll do my utmost, but the more you put into it, the more astounding the result will be. In fact, no matter who you are, if you exceed my resolve to seek the heart of God, there is no reason why you cannot end up surpassing my enjoyment of God. I challenge you to shame me by doing just that. Obviously, I cannot take you beyond where I have been, but I’d be deeply honored if God granted me the privilege of pointing the way.

Before we take the plunge, we need to pray. Please join me.

Loving God, I long for you to be the love of my life. I hear of others having gooey feelings about you and dramatic spiritual experiences but at times it seems my only feeling is that of being left out. I want to find you warm and intimate and perfect in all your ways but sometimes you seem cold and aloof and more interested in other people.

If you truly are the God of infinite love, the God whose love is so staggering that it surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19) with the power to go far beyond what I can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20), I dare to ask for love that surpasses my wildest dreams.

Nevertheless, I crave not just excitement and fulfillment but reality. I don’t want to be duped by sentimental nonsense. Neither do I want to be sidetracked by superficiality so that I miss the wonders that you offer. I don’t want to delude myself, nor miss out on the best you have for me. Please open my eyes to your real nature. I want to know you as you truly are and to have the courage and conviction to devote my life to what you reveal. So I seek you for a spiritual revelation, a divine encounter so powerful that, whether it comes slow or fast, it ends up adding an entire dimension to my life. If you are so beautiful that – as they say even of nice humans – to know you is to love you, and if to know you is to truly live (John 17:3), open my eyes to the perfection and stunning beauty of your goodness. Captivate me. If the greatest commandment is to love you, my God, with my whole heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37-38), empower me to seek you tenaciously until I receive a revelation of your love that is so real and vast that I truly fall in love with you.

Not out of pride or selfishness but out of a yearning to thrill you, I want more of you than even what the average Christian settles for. May I become determined to do whatever it takes not to rob myself and break your heart by settling for less than the unique fulfillment and heights of ecstasy and intimacy with you that Christ suffered inconceivable agony for you and I to enjoy.

I’m a little apprehensive of where this might lead but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18) and you are meant to be Perfect Love. If you really are Perfect Love, you alone are truly safe, and I open myself up to you. Come with me as I read the following pages. Empower me to use them as a diving board to plunge deep into spiritual reality.

Before I can expect you to do this, however, there is one nagging issue I need to settle. Facing up to this should not be as hard as it feels since one of the liberating things about drawing close to you is that I can truly be myself. I don’t have to hide my faults because you already know them. Moreover, you say over and over in your Word that you are eager to cleanse to spotless purity all who admit their failings, and that you lift high all who humble themselves.

I cannot expect you to open my eyes to your love if I have blinded those eyes with arrogance. So I need to come clean with you. I have called you God and yet criticized you as if you were the foolish one and I were the one with infinite knowledge and wisdom. I have called you Lord (meaning Master) and ordered you around – “Lord do this, Lord do that” – as if I were the master and you were my slave. In reality, you owe no one anything; we owe you everything. You have given and given and given, and in self-centered arrogance, each of us have taken and taken and taken. You have never wronged us; we have wronged you too many thousand times to count, and yet you have kept turning the other cheek and kept on forgiving, while we have had the hideous audacity to falsely blame you.

It’s not just other people who have done this, Lord: I’m guilty of it, too. I not only seek your forgiveness and cleansing, I ask that you show me anything I need do to cooperate with you in eradicating from my life arrogance, bitterness and any other blemishes that could spiritually blind me; fogging my ability to behold your beauty. So now, if I have given myself enough time to settle these key issues, come with me as I walk through these webpages. Having skimmed the surface in this webpage, I beg you to plunge into the helpful and inspiring reading below to deepen your awareness of God’s love for you. To maximize your enjoyment of the most wonderful Person in the universe, it is important to read prayerfully every page. They are part of an enormous Christian website, so to avoid getting lost, don’t forget to bookmark this webpage.

Understanding God’s Love for You How to Know if God Loves Me

You Can Find Love' Available in many different languages and even different levels of English, this webpage explains how God is the Perfect Partner we yearn for. Though we try countless substitutes, everyone’s deepest craving is for intimacy with God. In this page you will learn how to commence the most exciting experience any human can have.

You are loved! Burst through doubts about God’s love for you and bask in his matchless love.

To God, You Are Special! A short but powerful look at the intensity of God’s love for you as an individual. To him you are unique and irreplaceable.

Why God Loves You as Much as Anyone Though it is easy to mistakenly think of oneself as second class, no one in the universe is more important to God than you.

God’s Tender Love A short webpage bringing together amazing, heart-warming Scriptural insights into the depth and tenderness of God’s feelings for you.

Feeling Loved by God Help when you yearn to feel God’s love, but cannot. God’s Wonderful Will For You The Almighty is not a kill-joy, nor arrogant, nor selfish. No one has your best interests at heart like your Lord.

Is God Like a Perfect Mother? Those who through bad experiences with men are apprehensive about what seems the masculine or fatherly side of God can warm to the knowledge that God’s beautiful nature has aspects that in humans would be called feminine or maternal. Both genders were made in God’s image. Warm to the realization that God epitomizes – and far surpasses – the best of both.

God & Suffering What makes this series of webpages so important is that the slightest doubt about God’s goodness or integrity will cast a gloomy shadow over our ability to delight in the most beautiful Person in the universe. These webpages will help you distinguish between God and evil and help you understand how good God is. How to Change Your Self-Image Our self-image deeply affects our ability to believe we can be loved. We need to see ourselves through God’s eyes, not through our own eyes or our guess as to how other people see it.

Feeling Rejected by God This is part of the Handling Guilt series mentioned below, but you might wish to zero in on the topic of feeling rejected. It shows powerfully through Scripture how God did not give up on people even when on the surface he seemed to give them no hope of acceptance.

In Love with God A woman inspires us as she tells of her passion for God despite at one time feeling let down by him. Jesus, Our Brother, Our Example The love God has for you is not only like that of the perfect friend, lover, mother and father, but also like that of the perfect brother or sister. To be born again means that, spiritually, we have in our being the very genes of God. Explore the exciting implications. Spiritual Wilderness Survival Guide Help and encouragement when God seems far away

Love’s Rest Enjoying God: God’s Cure for Burn Out. The Ultimate Revenge How God has showered you with his extravagant love by fully avenging every injustice you have ever suffered. Extreme Grace About a Christian who kept doing all he could to force God to reject him. A deeply moving testimony highlighting God’s tenderness and extreme patience and love toward us.

Amazing Love A very short webpage about the Infinite Love of an Infinite God Developing Your Love Affair with God Expounds all the elements involved in developing intimacy with God. How to Fall More in Love with God Although the topic of prayer is featured, this page, and the one it leads to, will significantly help you fall in love with God, with simple, practical suggestions.

Related Topics Handling Guilt This commences a most important series of comforting and uplifting webpages, tackling such issues as being plagued by guilt feelings, feeling rejected by God, fearing you may have committed the unpardonable sin or suspecting that God is punishing you. Since nothing robs us of our enjoyment of God’s love like fearing that he might be frowning on us, this series will do much to deepen your enjoyment of God. Why God’s Anger is Comforting Surprising insights into why God’s Anger reveals his love. Correctly understood, God’s wrath makes him even more lovable. When Doubt Knocks Earlier links above focus specifically on doubting God’s love. This deals with doubting in general. Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors Regardless of one’s gender, one of the many benefits of healing from physical or sexual abuse or child abuse is an increased ability to feel. It has enormous implications for our ability to feel God’s love and to trust and enjoy him. As an act of thanks for this website, Toni Gilyard sent me her poem that lets us glimpse the exquisite delight each of us can find in God’s love: You are intimate and obvious and delicious and satisfying and intoxicating and sobering You are passionate and steady and amazing and gentle and invigorating and oh so very quiet . . . I am out of words for now words describe . . . and limit words contain – restrict – define and explain Let me be out of words for now Let me stay here in this silent love . . . Resting in the glaring mystery of you Hushed in the majestic awe of you . . .

© Toni Gilyard, 2002, 2006 Net-Burst.Net