You Are Covered Up with Love!
I thought today might be a good day just to think about how much God loves you. To take a moment to pause and just breathe in His love and His complete acceptance of you; His desire for your love and His desire to love you, too. To think about His unwavering devotion to blessing you, proven by everything He has said and every action and decision regarding you; it is all pure love toward you and nothing else.
I heard a sermon thirty years ago that I still think about and aspire to. The pastor said that if we could ever grasp how fully, richly, and unreservedly God loves us that we would not have the propensity to sin that we do. We would be so secure in His covering of love that we would not need to justify, criticize, or build up riches or testaments to our pride. If we could believe the unshakeable fact that we are drenched and filled up with His love, then that love would be unmistakably evident to those around us. We would not need to think of ways to evangelize; our condition of being so loved would shine all over us. That love would flow out of us and anyone who met us would want to be a person loved like that.
But as much as I believe all the promises of the Bible and feel His love and have seen Him prove His faithfulness all these years, I still have my times of behaving as if it is up to me to look better to Him or to others. It is pitiful but true.
In Dane Ortland’s life-transforming l book Gentle and Lowly, he says that part of our problem is that we keep trying to make God more like us. Before you disagree, I will say that in our efforts to understand who God is, we unconsciously take a human framework or context and try to understand Him that way. We try to compare Him to what we already understand: love as we understand it; forgiveness as we understand it; relationship as we understand it; and so on. We think God is at the top of the framework for each of those, but it is still a very human framework and so limited. He is not the top of the heap—He is so far beyond the heap that we cannot use that to measure Him. His love is unfathomably greater than that. We cannot understand a God Who has no limits to how much He loves us and wants to bless us.
Ortland says that when our hearts drift, they drift to being a bit more critical or selfish. Not God’s. We cannot understand a God that has a natural drift of His heart to love us more and more, to bless us more and more, to forgive us more and then more. Throughout the Bible, He does not want to bring the calamities that lead to repentance because His natural bent is to spare us and have mercy. Unlike ours, His natural condition is patience. And only when it is the only and best path to repentance and peace with Him does the Lord allow the difficulties into our lives, so even that is an act of love.
Think about the Father’s love for you today and let that spill over into a world badly in need of it right now.
Remember these assurances about God’s love for you.
1. Always beneath you are the everlasting arms waiting to hold you up when you falter.
-The eternal God is your dwelling place
and underneath are the everlasting arms. Deuteronomy 27a
- the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31:3
2. Your name is engraved on the palms of His hands. Think about that reality. Your name is a part of Him every day.
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. Isaiah 49:16
3. You are held at all times, even when you think you are alone or stumbling. You are held close to His breast and under His wings every minute.
- He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psalm 91:4
- He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:11
- For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. Isaiah 41:13
4. His love is continual, unceasing, and will never end.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
Isaiah 46:4