You are Loved

    Have you ever experienced the kind of love that engulfs you? Love that surrounds you? Love that offers companionship, acceptance, constant, never changing, beautiful and eternal? This is just a brief description of the kind of love we can experience from God. He makes this love available for each one of us. He calls to us to this amazing love, love that existed even before we had turned to Him and intimacy that does not change according to fickle human emotions.

 

Photo by Chris F: https://www.pexels.com/photo/wooden-plank-with-inscription-written-with-chalk-5833202/  

If you have experienced hurt, abuse, misuse and all these things you might even be scared to be loved because people around you expressed their version of 'love' on you and it made you weary of the word itself. But this is the kind of love that washes over you like a gentle wave, healing and restoring scars and wounds. It heals pain, it restores faith in love, it restores broken hearts, minds and souls and even bodies. It fills you up with contentment and even overflows to a point you thought you loved someone but when you experience God's love, you love the person even more. Even the limits and boundaries you had set on love are broken as you begin to learn what the definition of love is and the very common verse of 

John 3:16 means more now than it ever did, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

 

Photo by William Fortunato : https://www.pexels.com/photo/ethnic-couple-gently-holding-hands-while-pushing-stroller-together-6393303/ Knowing that you are loved changes everything. You may wonder how it does that? A lot of times, you may be walking around with a checklist you might not even realize is there, waiting for the person who promised to always be there for you to let you down, waiting for the wrong response to a questions, waiting for the other person to prove you right, that all your poor past experiences have proven about love. But when you know you are loved and moreover by the Creator of everything, Himself, it changes how you look at yourself and how you look at others. In fact, it changes how you love others. You may have had a very limited take on love and now it is as though your heart grew bigger and more accommodating of those around you.

 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photography-of-woman-sitting-on-chair-near-window-761882/ 

What response should you have to this knowledge? Well having a fact in your mind and having truth enmeshed into who you are differ greatly. Internalizing this truth is what changes everything. Absorbing the fact that God who made everything, made you, knows you by name, loves you is something you take time to sit with. You sit with it until it becomes part of your framework. It just becomes who you are and as you internalize it, you adapt the pattern you were created to have, expressing this love to yourself as a being that was made in God's image, and towards other people. You also recognize how important love is and you don't cast your pearls to swine, which means you don't waste love on people who are determined to misuse it. You can love them from far but you don't let their lack of love embitter you and poison you from being the person God made you to be. Additionally, you watch what you expose yourself to because the more you expose yourself to bitterness, hatred and anger, the more you begin to show these traits outwardly. After you come to receiving God's love, you let it transform you, share it with others and preserve it from polluting influences. Who will you share God's love with today? 

 

Photo by Kampus Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/friends-lying-down-on-grass-8380079/ 


 

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