Welcome back to our Thursday spring study – We Are What He Calls Us. I don’t know where you are today, or how loved you feel right now, but I am so passionate about sharing this label with you. As we began this journey, I wrote about how often our value turns on our success or relationships. So knowing the names God calls us is critically important in keeping us grounded and confident of our worth. Last week, I shared God calls us “Chosen.”
Today, He Calls Us: Loved.
Sweet friend, if you hear nothing else, hear this: You. Are. Loved. God loves you. This claim over you is equally as important as the claim that you are Chosen. It may even sound like the same thing, but it is different. I began this list of what God calls us with You Are Chosen because we may falsely assume God’s love for us is mandatory. For example, I have three children I am totally in love with, but I did not choose them. God chose them for me. I could not be more delighted that He did, but I love them because they are mine not because I chose them. God is a different kind of parent. We are the adopted sons and daughters of God. He picked us out. As you will see, His hand designed us. That means His love is pretty spectacular. He does not love us because He has to –He loves us because He chose us and He wants to love us.
I do not know where you are today. You may feel incredibly loved by many people. You may feel as though you’ve never been loved. You may have experienced fickle love. Love you believed would stand the test of time, whether from your family or friends or romantically, but then crumbled. You may have relied on love from the puffed up pride of yourself. You may have felt unloved when the cheers of the audience disappeared once you made a misstep. Few loves survive the dark valleys. The loss of love is heart wrenching. I have crawled through that pit of anguish and heartbreak. I have felt loved, but I have also felt unloved.
God’s love is constant. It does not change. It does not disappear. Ephesians 3, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, draws such a vivid picture of Christ’s love. His love is so wide and so long and so high and so deep that it surpasses knowledge. It is like Paul (the author) wants to communicate to us as vividly as possible that we cannot conceive of how vast God’s love for us is. God’s love is unconditional. What a challenge for humans to grasp since we are incapable of that kind of love. The Bible uses four words to describe types of love. Agape is considered the highest of the four and is unwavering, unmerited, uninhibited, and unconditional. C. S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, used agape to describe this highest level of love: a selfless love, a love passionately committed to the well-being of the other. God loves you with this agape love. You can not earn it. You also can not lose it.
You are loved. I am loved. How do I know?
Jeremiah 31:3: The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
I John 3:1-2: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
Ephesians 2:4: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.
Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Psalm 42:8: By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me.
Ephesians 3:17-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
I Thessalonians 1:5: For we know, brothers [siblings] loved by God, that he has chosen you. {God even pairs His love with His chosing you! The Message translates this verse as: It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. Wow!}
A beautiful reminder. Thank you.