Artist signed in image.

I have recently been both challenged and encouraged to consider just how much God loves me. I have been overwhelmed by the results of this focus.
I thought I had a fairly clear picture of what God’s love looks like and how that plays into my day to day relationship with Him, But I have come to realize my vision of this image falls far short of the literal.
I believe I could spend a lifetime on this one subject and still only begin to scratch the surface of this incredibly deep, powerful, and life changing fact. Just getting a glimpse of the fullness of Gods love will change your life forever, and everything in it.

There are certain attributes listed throughout the Bible that speak to who God is. The I Am…God is…We know that God is Holy, we know that God is Just. For many that seems to be enough. They devote them selves to separation and living by a set of rules. They are quick to judge those who fail to meet what they proclaim to be God’s expectations. Those who suffer as a result of their own sin are given no compassion because they are simply reaping what they have sown, and are not worthy, or have placed themselves somewhere ourside of God’s grace.
Yet, before we came to Christ, we were all in a position to reap what we have sown. In fact God would be perfectly Just and perfectly Holy to simply allow us to reap what we have sown, and spend eternity in destruction and outer darkness, separated from God forever. BUT HIS LOVE WOULD NOT HAVE IT. He did not stop with the first Covenant, He did not stop with the law, perfect in itself, but only had the power to reveal sin and condemn it. To let the natural law of sowing and reaping to just play out, which would leave us all condemned. Instead, before the foundations of the world were laid, He chose to make us the focus of His love.

Ephesians 1:3-6 MSG
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

How can anyone who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ, had their sin forgiven and made just by His sacrifice on Calvary, not have some concept of God’s love.
John says God is love. Just as much as God is Holy, as much as He is Just, God is love.

1 John 4:7-12 MSG
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

Your spirituality is not measured by the rules you keep, how much of the Bible you have memorized, how many people you have lead to Christ, how much biblical knowledge you possess, but how well you love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7 MSG
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of oth ers, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.

All of what you know, everything you have learned about God, all of the things you have done, feed the poor, help the needy, leading people to Christ, prison ministry, care of the elderly. No mater what you say, what you do, what you believe, you are spiritually bankrupt without love.
Holiness, Justice, the law, could only point out and condemn sin. Our eternal relationship with God is totally dependant on mercy, grace and forgivness, which is only produced by God’s unfailing, relentless, love for us.
I Corinthians 8:1 “…knowledge puffs up, but love builds up…”.
The fact is, people really do not care how much you know, about the Bible, about God. What matters to them is are you really willing to love them right where they are, then what you know has meaning for them…Jesus loves you and so do I.