Last week I had a difficult conversation with someone important to me. This person carries a heavy grudge against God. A lifelong Christian, this person grew up in a home where Bible was weaponized and used as a reason to justify harsh words and frequent punishment. Instead of learning the fear of God as reverence for a holy God, this person was taught that God was hostile and he prioritized punishment over love. Even with a lifetime of knowing the Bible, this person still struggles with lingering hard feelings.
Maybe you can relate. You know that you are saved by God, but you question whether He loves you. Whether the trauma from your upbringing, you’ve been unlucky in love, suffered from poor health, stuck in a painful marriage, or constant financial insecurity you’re pretty sure that God has favorites, and you aren’t one of them.
When the person in my conversation admitted their grudge against God, my heart simply broke for them. If this is how you feel, my heart breaks for you as well. It’s devastating to wonder if God loves you or excruciating to believe that He doesn’t. Not feeling God’s love is like being stuck under a dark cloud. You know the sun is there, but you can’t feel its warmth.
God’s heart hurts for you as well. He knows that when we question His love, we’re vulnerable to Satan’s lies. The Enemy of our soul knows that when we doubt God’s love, we’ll justify doing what God knows isn’t good for us. As the proverbs say, this path seems right at first. Instead of finding the substitute for God’s love that we long for, we unintentionally create pain, brokenness, and hurt people around us.
God wants us to experience His love because only He can satisfy our deepest longings for security, acceptance, and peace. If you’ve struggled with believing God’s love for you today, I don’t have any quick fixes or Band-Aids for your situation. But, I do want to share three important reminders that I believe God wants you to hear today:
- Even if you question God’s love for you, God never questions His love for you. (Jeremiah 31:3, Ephesians 3:18, 1 John 4:7-8)
- The evidence of God’s love rests in the most loving thing that he ever did for us: For God, so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:10)
- Even if you continue to struggle, you cannot mess up God’s love for you. As a believer in Jesus Christ, nothing can separate you from God. (Romans 8: 35-39)
Let’s pray together:
God, please remove the cloud that I feel between us. You didn’t put the cloud there, but I can’t make it go away alone. I want to experience the warmth of Your love. Help me to shift from judging Your love by my circumstances to trusting Your love by what You’ve already done for me through Jesus Christ in my eternal salvation. In Jesus’ name, amen.
FINAL NOTE: If this isn’t a challenging area for you, please don’t judge those who struggle with trusting God’s love. Pray for them. I do believe That God is ready and willing to meet anyone in the struggle. If they are willing, God will guide them out of confusion into the clarity and power of His love.
Let go of feeling like you are not a “good enough” Christian and find freedom in Christ by studying Paul’s letter to the Galatians in my Bible study, Breakthrough: Finding Freedom in Christ.
In this six-week Bible study of Galatians, you’ll see that believers in the early church struggled to let go of rule-keeping and performance in order to embrace God’s free gift of grace.
If you’ve ever struggled with feeling like God is disappointed with you, wondered if He loves you or you’ve felt trapped by rules or religion, this study will provide a path to discover your freedom in Christ.
