God’s Love Comes First
How confident are you in God’s love for you?
Verse of the Day
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Today’s Devotional
One of the definitions of love is “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties”. I have a great group of “kin”, but not all people are blessed in that area. Some people’s families are difficult. Very difficult. But in my experience with fostering, I can tell you that children long for their biological families. Sometimes in ways that don’t make sense. My guess is that a longing for our birth family is hard-wired into our DNA. I would say that God’s love and longing for us doesn’t make sense either. We are messy, disobedient, easily distracted, stubborn, selfish and all around hard to love sometimes. Yet He seeks us constantly and gently. He loved us first, before we ever even existed, even when He knew what choices we would make. Maybe He does all of that because we are His “kin”.
I disagree with the above definition that love is a “strong affection” – also known as an emotion. I agree with the biblical definition of love – that it is an action. Or more accurately, love is a series of actions. Love isn’t always rosy and pleasant. Anyone with a child can tell you that. Sometimes love looks like discipline and consequences. Sometimes love is silent. Sometimes love has things going on behind the scenes that we can’t see until the appropriate time, therefore what feels like silence is not.
This verse tells me that love is not conditional upon a certain response. God loves me no matter how I respond to His love for me. This verse tells me that God’s love acts first. It tells me that God’s love is real and sacrificial. Real love does things that make the receiver better. And God’s love makes me better.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
Finish this sentence: I know God loves me because….
How does your heart respond to the overwhelming bigness of God’s love for you? (If your heart does not respond, ask God to show you what might be blocking your reception of His love.)
How can you imitate that kind of love to other humans?
I challenge you to sit, quiet and still, for several minutes and allow your mind to reflect on God’s love for you. When your mind wonders, which it will, picture the God of heaven gently whispering to you, “I love you.”