I Love You

More clearly than I have ever heard it, I heard God speak these words into my heart today.

"I love you."

I've heard them before.  I've heard them from family and friends and I've heard that God loves me I don't know how many times.  However, today was different.  Today, for the first time I feel like in forever, I finally got it.  I finally understood.  God LOVES me.  He truly does love me and wants the best for me.  I don't know why that fact never clicked with me before but as I reflect back on my life I think I can understand why.  I think some of it has to do with the fact that I have been an approval seeker for many years.  I have yearned to have the approval of others and would do what I had to in order to have the approval that I wanted from those that I wanted it from.  I applied the same approach to God. I tried to earn God's approval.  I have lived my life so far with this attitude that as long as I did all the right things, God would love me.  If I messed up though and sinned, then all I could imagine was God looking down on me with great disappointment on his face.  Living this way caused me to doubt my salvation even.  There were several times where I wondered if I was still saved.  I had this fear that I was not really saved, that somehow some mistake that I had made had invalidated my salvation and I was now bound for Hell.

Today though, God healed me of that.

I can now say that for the first time in a very long time I truly and deeply feel God's love for me.  It is a love that is fulfilling and a love that stays no matter what.  That is why I urge you today to let God love you.  Let his love fill every part of your being so that you can also know what it is like to be loved by your Creator.  It's like having a void in my heart filled.  I want you to know what this feels like to.  Just let him love you.  Open your heart and let God pour his love deep inside your soul.

Amen!