Reflections of Grace 148: God’s Kind of Love

Reflections of Grace 148: God’s Kind of Love June 23, 2017

God’s Kind of Love

He is our Bridegroom with desire for us and who pursues us relentlessly.

He is our King with power, and He gives us the power to love as He loves.  Imagine it!  We cannot love the unlovely without His anointing to see them through His eyes.  He sees the heart.  In our own power, we cannot.

Did you know He pursues us far more than we pursue Him.   Yet we still struggle with making the time to meet Him.   I don’t know how many times I have known He is sitting at my place of pondering, prayer, and meditation, waiting for me, and yet, I find a hundred other things I must do first.   The whole day passes and I have put Him off again.

I pray my days of walking past Him grow less and less as I continue to realize that my strength to walk with Him and to fight the battles of my warfare only come from Him and Him alone.

No area of Jesus’ supremacy and power and authority is expressed or experienced more than when His love is manifest in us.   It fills us to capacity and changes us from the inside out!God's Kind of Love

Jesus Himself announced that God loves us in the way that God the Father loves God the Son. The Father feels the same intensity of love for us that He feels for Jesus.

Wrap your mind around that fact!

The God of the universe longs for relationship with you.   He wants to walk and talk with you as He did with Adam and Eve when He created them.

  • That is so hard to imagine in our finite minds, but true nonetheless.

The ultimate statement about our worth and value is that Jesus has the same measure of love and affection towards us that His Father has towards Him.

It gives us all the right to view ourselves as “God’s favorite”.

This is a gold mine of truth that deserves our focused attention continuously.

At the last supper, Jesus emphasized this truth to His disciples just before their failures in denying Him.

  • “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love…These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:9-11)

Did you realize He said this to the disciples while already knowing they would fail Him?  His love for me and you does not depend on how ‘good’ we are….anymore than your love for your child changes when they are not ‘good’ kids.  He loves you because you are His child.   And you have accepted Jesus which means your unrighteousness has been exchanged for the righteousness of Jesus and He sees you as His precious child.

How do we find this place of divine love and stay there?

  1. Abide:

Stay focused on God’s love.  By abiding, beholding Him, and living in this truth, we position ourselves to experience it more.  Don’t be distracted from this truth.

Go deep in it… Surrender to it without resisting or negotiating with God about it.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us. (1 Jn. 3:1)

Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord… (Jude 21)

  1. Joy:

When we experience Jesus’ love for us, it changes how we feel.  Feeling God’s affection for us exhilarates our hearts with joy—a deep sense of well-being.

Jesus is telling us where satisfaction and emotional transformation are best found.

The revelation of God’s love for us gives us confidence before God, even in our weakness.

It reveals to us our value and dignity in God’s eyes…

  • Empowers us to walk in deep partnership with Jesus….

It gives our lives relevance in knowing that we are loved, not based on how we perform, but because we belong to Him.

Such love overwhelms me, how about you?

The Bridegroom’s message is about Jesus’ emotions for us, His beauty, His commitments to us,

  • … to share His heart, home, throne, secrets, and beauty.

An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence.

Jesus is not the religious guy in white robe and sandals that you are afraid to approach or be yourself with.

But He is the Jesus who gave us oceans and rivers, beauty and laughter, sunlight and love…His penetrating love that will transform you.

There are millions who try to relate to Jesus but experience him only occasionally, rarely knowing the joy of hearing his voice, feeling his presence, receiving his powerful, healing love.

  • We need Jesus, Himself. And you can have Him.

You can experience Jesus, intimately.

You were meant to.

  • You can know the comfort of his actual presence, hear his voice speaking to you, receive healing of your brokenness.

You can live as he did.

There are a great many gods in this world who are worshipped by people of other religions, but the God in John 3:16 is the One who was in the beginning, the Creator of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1). He is the source of all life, is continually present with us, and will someday bring all creation to a climax. The Lord has given us the Bible that is an expression of Himself and His love. And because He loves us so much, in His Word is a message, which can change our eternal destiny.

We must understand that God’s love is not like ours. Human love is an intense affection for another person which is based on feelings and which can change from moment to moment. In contrast, divine love is unconditional because it is not based on what we do or don’t do but on God’s nature. It’s also consistent. If Christ is our Savior, we never have to worry that the Lord may be angry with us. Perhaps the best example of the nature of God’s love is the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). The father’s love never changed even though the son left home, wasted his wealth, and ended up destitute. As soon as the father saw his son returning, he ran to him and hugged him—not because he started to love him at that moment, but because he’d never stopped loving him. And that’s the kind of love God has for us.


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