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One of the greatest gifts that we can have from God is Divine Confidence in God’s love for us. Let’s look at it for a moment…
 How much do you think that God the Father loves God the Son? Does the Heavenly Father love Jesus a little, or a lot? I know that you will agree with me that the way that God loves God is not even comprehensible to our human minds. How can the depths of such love even be fathomed?
Amazingly, Jesus tells us that He loves every believer to the same degree that God the Father loves Him. Then Jesus calls us to abide, or live in the reality of this love. But He doesn’t stop there. Of course God the Father loves Jesus. He is the One and Only, unique Son of God, the perfect God-Man – of course He loves Jesus. Hang on to your seat. Are you ready for this? Jesus says that not only does God the Father love Him, but He also loves us in the same manner, to the same degree!
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:17-19)
THE TRUTH THAT ANCHORS OUR SOUL: HOW GOD FEELS ABOUT US
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. (John 15:9)
for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. (John 16:27)
It is important for us to know, understand and walk in the truth concerning how God feels about us. This is particularly important when we are aware of areas of darkness in our lives. Our hearts must be anchored in the reality of His love for us – independent of our performance. This is what God has communicated to us through His Word, for the purpose of equipping us in our times of weakness.
Our enemy does not want us to see this. He wants us to lose sight of God’s love for us because he wants us to shrink back from God. Without confidence in God’s love for us, we will run away from Him instead of to Him in our times of weakness and brokenness.
When we sin, God desires for us to stand before Him, ask Him for forgiveness, repent (repentance means to change the way that we think about our sin), and to declare war on it. We declare war on sin when we purpose in our heart to not give ourselves to sin in any way. We may fall in an area of sin many times; yet even in the midst of that struggle still be declaring war on it by hating it and treating it as our enemy and determining within ourselves to love God.
When we turn away from sin and to God, He wants us to be confident that we stand before Him as a first-class citizen in His family and in His Kingdom. We must have confidence in the fact that He has given us the gift of righteousness in which we can now walk. He wants us to have the confidence that He loves us in the same way, to the same degree, that He loves His One and Only Unique Son, Jesus. The only way we can mature into mature son-ship is by having this confidence; God loves us while we are growing. If we do not know He loves us in the process of maturity, we will not continue coming to Him in the seasons when we are struggling with our sin.
Beloved, weak love is not false love. I cannot over emphasize that last statement. Read it again. Weak love is not false love. In God’s eyes weak love is sincere love, and God desires us to be confident in His delight over us while we are still in the process of maturing. God sees the cry of our spirit to love Him. When our heart is reaching, making determination to obey, it moves God. The longing to obey is the beginning of victory over sin.
Spiritual immaturity is not the same thing as rebellion, though outwardly they may appear the same. The difference is that when a sincere believer sins, they are grieved over it. When a person in rebellion sins, they are unconcerned as long as they get away with it.
CONVICTION VS. CONDEMNATION
The conviction of the Holy Spirit, also called guilt, is something that we feel when we sin. It lets us know that what we have done is wrong. When we sin, we grieve the Person of the Holy Spirit Who lives inside of us, by coming into agreement with darkness. We feel this grief in our heart. This guilt is the gift of God to us without which we would be unrestrained to our deaths (naturally and spiritually).
Repentance, changing our minds, is the turning point. Once we have turned from our sin, and turned back to God, we should no longer feel this guilt because the Holy Spirit is no longer grieved by it. Our guilt is removed by the blood of Jesus.
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:14)
The discipline of the Lord is not rejection. God shines His perfect light in the areas where we are not living in agreement with His leadership because He desires to see us grow into full maturity and because He delights in the process of growth. God convicts and disciplines us in order to remove all that hinders our ability to receive His love and love Him back in response.
11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, 12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. (Proverbs 3:11-12)
5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. 12 Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13)
Condemnation, also called shame or accusation, does not originate with God. Condemnation sometimes remains after we repent and tries to tell us that who we are as a person is wrong; that everything about us is bad. Shame makes us want to give up, to quit in our relationship with God. It leaves us without hope and prompts us to run away from God instead of to Him when we sin.
Satan accuses us night and day, wanting us to believe that we are hopeless hypocrites that struggle to love God while the truth is that we are lovers of God who struggle with sin.
…for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. (Revelation 12:10)
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…(Romans 7:22-25)
The mercies of God are new to us every single morning. If we declare war on our sin and cry out for the blood of Jesus to cover us, we are first-class citizens in the family of God and in the Kingdom of God.
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24)
CONFIDENT IN LOVE BEFORE GOD
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:17-19)
We can experience the love of God in a perfected way. Perfected love here is not referring to love as flawless, but as mature. We know that we have experienced the love of God in a mature way by knowing we will stand before Him in confidence on the great and terrifying Day of Judgment. We will not draw back in shame on that day.
We can have confidence that we are fully accepted both then and now because as Jesus stands before the Father clean and secure, so also do we. If we are seeking 100% obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leadership in our lives (repenting of known sin), there is no reason for us to fear. Fear involves the torment – that sick foreboding feeling of being judged and rejected by God. We do not need to have one moment of uncertainty as to how God feels about us. We can run to God instead of away from Him while we are maturing in love.
Some think of uncertainty and fear of rejection from God as humility. This is not the teaching of the Scriptures. We have every reason to be confident before God, even in our weakness, if we are repenting and resisting the areas that are grieving the Holy Spirit in our lives. We do not have to be overcoming in every area of our life, every moment of every day, to have this boldness before God, but we do need to be in agreement with areas the Holy Spirit is resisting in our lives.
FOUR EXPRESSIONS OF THE LOVE OF GOD IN OUR EXPERIENCE
Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” (Luke 7:47)
God loves, or another way to state it is that He enjoys us. As our understanding and experience of God’s enjoyment of us grows, the other expressions of His love in our lives will mature as well. This overflow of God’s love back to God results in our loving God more. As we experience God’s love towards us, we are empowered to love Him more in return. We can only love God to the measure that we receive His love. We will never love Him more than our revelation and experience of His love for us.
We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
One necessary by-product of our understanding and experiencing God’s love for us is that we will start to love ourselves, as God loves us. Now, don’t get me wrong, we do not love ourselves in a worldly, selfish way. We love ourselves for God’s sake, which means that we see ourselves as He sees us. Another natural overflow of knowing and experiencing God’s love and enjoyment of us is that we will start to love others. We can only love others to the measure that we have a godly love for ourselves.
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39)
Beloved, make it a point to study and to think about God’s love for you. Ask Him for revelation on His love. Ask Him to help you to rightfully love yourself as He loves you. Then ask Him to help you love others to the same degree that you love yourself. When that starts to happen, you will see both the first and second commandment increasingly fulfilled in your life. You were made for this!
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