Good News - God Loves You!!! |
| The Good News is: GOD LOVES YOU! Do you feel like no one loves you? God does. Do you feel that you have done so much wrong that no one could ever love you? God does. Do you feel like ending your life? Suicide is not the way to stop the pain. Receiving God’s love is the way to start living! There is a God, who is love, and He loves you personally. He loves you intensely. He loves you unconditionally. His love for you is unending and unchanging. You can come out of the depths of despair you can come out of the haunting nightmare of pain and self- destruction you can have a life worth living even now IF you believe and receive God’s love for you. Perhaps this miserable thought attacks you: If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me. A lot of us feel that way so we hide under a facade of fake smiles and superficial chatter, trying to hide our past, our present, and our pain. This is the good news: The One who knows you best loves you most. Jesus knows you. He knows your name and the names you’ve been called. He knows your heart and the number of times your heart has been crushed. He knows your hurts and your hopes. He knows every detail of your existence , the number of hairs on your head, how you were brought up, what happened that you don’t remember, how you were rejected, abandoned – ridiculed, betrayed humiliated. He knows where you are right now. HE KNOWS THE REAL YOU AND HE LOVES THE REAL YOU. He really does. God loves us in spite of what we have done. We murder, we abort babies, we cheat, we lie, we commit adultery, we get addicted to all kinds of things, we steal, we falsely accuse one another, we scheme, we break up our marriages and families, we break every commandment given by God for our good yet He loves us. We wreck our lives and the lives of others by being rebellious, selfish, callous, mean, nasty, immoral, unforgiving, hateful and bitter but God loves us. God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. Why does God love you? First, because God is love. Love is God’s nature. Second, because God esteems you. God sees your immense value. God made you, and to Him, you’re not trash. You’re a treasure worth more than all the jewels in this world. The greatest verse in the Bible, spoken by my Lord Jesus, speaks of the love of God for all of us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. [John 3:16] God’s love for us is strong. He SO loved that it got Him moving into the most dramatic, sacrificial effort ever launched in our behalf. God’s love for you drove Him to action. God’s love for you compelled Jesus to die for you. The cross of Jesus Christ is God’s final solution to the horrible evil and suffering in our world. Talk is cheap. Men and women are liars. But when God says He loves you, He proves it. He proved it by sending His beloved Son, Jesus, to die for you and me. God loves you so much that He would have sent Jesus to die for you and you alone. If you had been the only person on the earth who needed salvation, God would have sent Jesus to die just for you. The cross of Jesus proclaims: YOU are the focus of God’s attention. YOU are the target of God’s love. YOU are important to God. YOU are the one God has on His mind. The cross of Jesus stands forever as indisputable proof that God DOES care for you in the ultimate way. The cross of Jesus is the unbreakable bridge connecting God and you: the love of God reaches you because Jesus died for you. Love is a personal thing. God the Father wanted a family. He created you so that He could love you. He wants YOU in His family. He wants a personal relationship with you. He wants you to know that He loves you in spite of your sins and failures. He wants you to have the confidence that He loves you too much to give up on you. There have been many false prophets: None of them died for you. Jesus Christ is the only one who chose to die for your sin. Jesus Christ is the only one who has nail prints in His hands. Jesus Christ is the only one who rose from the dead and lives to give eternal life to all who believe in Him. Jesus would not have died for you if He did not love you. It was not the nails that kept Jesus on the cross - it was His love for you and me. We can trust His love. It will not vanish. It will never be withdrawn. You can’t get God not to love you. You can’t do anything to stop God from loving you. God loves us but He hates the sin we choose to commit. He hates our sin because it blocks His blessing in our life. It is because God loves us that He hates sin. Here is a passage that speaks volumes to our heart: To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood. [Revelation 1:5] We might think that God would wash us first and then love us. But no, first He loved us. It is His love that ingeniously formed the plan of redemption. It is His love that sacrificially gave to redeem us. It is His love that brought forth the one possible remedy for our sin: the sinless blood of Jesus Christ. He loves us as we are, but loves us too much to leave us as we are. He loves us no matter what we do, and when we receive His love, it inspires, motivates and empowers us to change what we do. If you will receive His love for you today, your life will become new in an instant. Life is worth living when you believe, receive, rely on, trust in, feel, grasp, and personally experience every day the love that God cherishes for you. What draws us to God? It is His love for us. The prophet said: The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. [Jeremiah 31:3] The issue is: will you receive God’s love for you? Will you reject God’s love for you so that you can go on the prison of sin, thinking you are free? You can turn your back on God’s love, but it will be to your loss. If you go to hell, it will not be because God did love you. It will be because you refused the love of God. Let me tell you what I know: you will never have a better Friend than Jesus. He shed His blood for you so that you could go to heaven. What you need to do is come to Jesus today. Let His loving arms wrap around you. Let His loving hands hold you. Jesus wants you. He desires a personal relationship with you. Will you respond to His love right now? Please take this opportunity to receive His love. Say this from your heart: Lord Jesus, I turn away from my sin and I come running to You. I take You as my Lord and Savior. I receive Your love. I choose You as my Lord and my God. From this moment forward, let all know: I belong to Jesus. Jesus is my Lord. Amen and Amen. |