The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NIV)
Do you feel weighed down with the belief that you don’t deserve God’s love? Well, if you do, you are not alone. I think many people struggle with that. That feeling of not being good enough to receive God’s love and His blessings has plagued me for years. The words of Romans 5:8 reassure me though, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Our heavenly Father knows that we are imperfect. He knows everything about us, but He loves us anyway. We can count on that, no matter what. Being in relationship with us was important enough to Him that He was willing to sacrifice His Son, Jesus Christ, to make that possible – for all of eternity.
When we are in His presence, our view of everything can change if we allow it. As we focus on Him and His love for us, our present struggles seem less daunting and we can be healed from the unpleasant things that have happened to us in the past. Because of His love, our lives can be transformed and restored to wholeness, one step at a time. In light of your current place in life, being restored to wholeness may seem out of your grasp, but it’s not. Remember that God is a God of possibilities –there’s nothing that He cannot do.
When we are tempted to give in to that feeling that we don’t deserve God’s love and His blessings, we should remember…”Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17) He has many good and perfect gifts for His children. Believing and trusting that can radically change your life, and allow you to be in a position of readiness to accept all that your heavenly Father has for you.
As I have reflected on this Scripture from Zephaniah and sought the Lord’s guidance about what He would have me write today, my thoughts have gone back over the past few years of my own life. My life has changed drastically. Despite my own personal weaknesses, I have written and published a book (“Our Father”), I have founded a ministry (“Bread of Life Ministries) and I have done a number of other things…none of which I would have ever thought possible. My personal story of how my life has changed and why these things have been possible, is that now I live in the awareness of God’s love for me, more than I ever have. But, as I have spent time meditating on this Scripture, the Lord has placed in my heart, the awareness that as much as I know His love for me in a whole new way than I did before, I’ve only gotten a small taste of the depth of His love for me. There’s more for me to experience yet. In my humanness, I would never be able to grasp the full measure of His love at once. As I live each day in expectancy of His good and perfect gifts, I know that He will reveal His love to me a little more as the days go by. That excites me and it gives me hope.
His Word reveals that He loves each of us equally, and He has great things in store for any of us willing to receive Him. What does He have in store for YOU today?
My prayer is, “Lord, thank you that you love each of us with an everlasting love, even though we are un-deserving of it. You have more great things in store for us than our human minds can fathom. Please show us your awesome love more each day.” AMEN.
