What is the cure to every ache in our heart, every ailment we’ll ever face, and every need we’ll ever have? More of God’s love. Don’t believe it? Well, then I encourage you to pursue a love relationship with the Lord and be amazed at how your life is transformed. Even if you consider yourself to already have a relationship with Him, I encourage you to go deeper. God has more for you! God’s love is so vast that it will take all of eternity to experience every beautiful aspect of it. A relationship with God never gets old. It’s new and exciting every day and God loves to lavish His love upon His children.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
1 John 3:1
You can’t earn God’s love, and neither can you deter it. His love for you is unconditional and everlasting. It’s so important to God that we experience His love that He sacrificed what is most precious to Him – His Son Jesus. Because of Jesus, we’re free to boldly run into God’s arms (Hebrews 4:14-16). Get a picture of that! Your perfect Heavenly Father waiting for you with arms wide open. Relationships are never one-sided though, which means we need to pursue one with the Lord. We need to run into those open arms. That’s something I venture to do every day. I desperately need God’s love to fill every longing in my heart, to quiet every fear I face, and to solidify who I am and what my purpose on this earth is. We all need this. Each of us was created with a God-shaped void only He could fill. The Bible says we were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16) So many people go through life and feel as though something is missing. That’s because there is! That something is a relationship with God. Living for this world only brings emptiness. Living to love the One who made us brings absolute fulfillment. And amazingly, the God of all creation desires a relationship with us!
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17b-19
How do I have this relationship you ask? Well, how do you have any relationship? You spend time with the person. You get to know them and discover what’s in their heart. You share your life with them and they with you. This is the same way we have a relationship with God. The Bible is God’s love letter to us and by reading it, we’ll discover God’s heart for us. I went to church my whole life. I heard about God all the time, people would say, “God loves you,” and I listened to sermons about God every Sunday; and yet I never fully grasped who God is or His love for me until I began to pursue a personal relationship with Him. When I read the Bible for myself and hungrily absorbed all it said, my life began to change. God wants to share His heart with you every day. He wants to lead you and guide you through the pitfalls of life. The Bible is His roadmap for our lives. Read the Gospel of John if you don’t know where to start. It’s one of the most amazing books in the Bible because its whole purpose is to point us to who Jesus is. I wrote a devotional called Encountering Jesus that walks through this gospel and encourages personal encounters. Reading the Word like this is how I experienced some of my own life-changing encounters with Jesus.
Every single day, God wants to reveal His heart to you. To show you how faithful and good He is. Spending time with Him in the Word brings peace, hope, and joy. It brings healing from wounds, the trials of life have inflicted upon us. We all have them. None of us has gone through this life unscathed. God’s love is a healing balm. So often we go through life responding to people and circumstances based on our past experiences. Our pain colors our paradigm and causes us to make choices that aren’t always best for us. God’s love, however, washes all that away as His love, rather than our pain, rules our heart.
Being transformed by God’s love…That’s what it’s all about. Life will never be perfect. We’ll face trials and difficulties, but God promises that with Him we’ll overcome them. His love will carry us above the cares of this world. We can either allow our pain to paralyze us or to propel us into our purpose. Our purpose, no matter who we are or what our walk in life, is to have a relationship with the Lord. Run to the Lord in times of difficulty – don’t run from Him. Run to Him every day. The Bible says, “God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. (Romans 8:28)” That’s an encouraging promise! There are so many things we can concern ourselves with in life, both good and bad, but today I want to encourage you to focus on the most important thing… knowing more of God so His love can transform your life from the inside out.
