Apicontent

Do you ever feel like no one cares about you? 

Or maybe you feel unworthy of being loved because of the way that you are or something that you have done.

Good news! God loves you and wants a love relationship with you. You may ask, “Why would an eternal, holy God care about me?”

The answer: Because God is love. Love permeates His entire being. No person will ever love you more, be as committed to you, or make a greater sacrifice for you than God.

When you understand God’s incredible love for you, it fills your need for love. This revelation helps you rest in His love regardless of your circumstances. Human love from imperfect beings will often fail you, but God’s love is the solid truth that will last forever.

God’s Love is Unconditional

God loves you because of who He is, not because of what you have done or not done.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. —Romans 5:8, NKJV

God’s Love is Unstoppable

No matter what circumstance you find yourself in, you will never be separated from the love God has for you.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 8:38-39, NKJV

God’s Love is Unfathomable

God’s love for you is so vast that it surpasses anything your mind can even imagine or dream of. But God created you to know, and come fully alive in, His love.

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
—Ephesians 3:18-19, NLT

God invites you to enjoy a love relationship with Him.

Step 1. Choose God’s Love

The God who created the universe desires a relationship with you. His very nature is to love and He longs to share Himself with you. God wants you to know Him personally and receive His love, and the life it brings, as a free gift.

Do you desire to begin a personal relationship with the God of love? [Find out more…]

Step 2. See God’s Love

Cultivate your love relationship with God and experience His limitless, transforming love for you. Delight in God’s forever love for you and let it become your constant source of assurance in all you do.

Do you want to become more aware of God’s amazing love for you? [Find out more…]

Step 3. Radiate God’s Love

God created you to be a channel of His love. He desires that His nature of love become your nature and that you radiate that to the world. He wants His love in you to overflow to others.

Do you desire to touch and transform the people around you with God’s love? [Find out more…]

May God bless you in your journey as His Forever Loved.

Have you allowed God, who created the universe, to love you deeply?  He desires a personal love relationship with you.

How would your life change if you were convinced of God’s great love for you? Amazing as it sounds, God wants you to be with him and experience his love forever here on earth and in heaven.

God Sees You Through Eyes of Love

“God is love” (1 John 4:8), God doesn’t just give love. He is love. Unconditional, self-giving, other-centered love is the essence of God.

God loves you regardless of your position in life, your religion or your thoughts and behaviors. Even your sins—past, present and future—cannot stop God from loving you.

God longs to heal the hurting, strengthen the weak and cheer the discouraged. He never gives up on anyone.

Why? Because the Creator of the Universe custom-designed you and cherishes you. Job said, “You guided my conception and formed me in the womb. You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit my bones and sinews together. You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love” (Job 10:10-12, NLT).

God Designed You to Live in Harmony with Him

God created you in his image to live in a love relationship with him.

In the beginning, God walked with Adam. God and the man he had created were in perfect unity. God gave; Adam received. God loved; Adam trusted.

Satan hated that unity. He knew that if he could sever the relationship, he would destroy Adam and all of mankind after him.

So Satan tempted Adam and Eve. They disobeyed God and that broke the connection. Every person since that day is now born with a sin nature and separated from God with a sin nature.

Mankind is sinful and sin deserves death. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, BSB). God is holy and full of all life. What could bridge this vast gulf?

Religion is mankind’s way of trying to become good enough to earn a restored relationship with God. But our own “good”, religious efforts will never be sufficient. We cannot free ourselves from past sins nor can we change our sin nature.

“With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible …” (Matthew 19:26, BSB).

God Wants You to Live with Him Forever

Because God loves us, he paid the price for our sins. “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8, NLT).

Through God’s plan of forgiveness, it’s possible to connect with him. God’s plan has nothing to do with religion; it has everything to do with having a personal, love relationship with the living God.

By dying on the cross, Jesus, God’s holy and perfect Son, paid the penalty for our sin so we could be reunited with God in eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NIV).

If you believe in Jesus and invite him into your life, eternal life with God is yours! When you leave this earth, you will go to heaven to live with him forever.

The promise of eternal life is yours by faith in what Jesus did for you on the cross.

“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.…” —Ephesians 2:8-9, BSB

Jesus is the only way to heaven. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, NLT).

God Wants to Love Others Through You

Jesus came to free us from past sins and give us eternal life. And he also came to replace our sin nature with his nature of love so we can live on earth as God designed.

God designed you to know his love and to share that love with others. Loving others marks you as a follower of Jesus.

Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34, 35, NIV).

God created you to live life on earth like Jesus did—in union with his Father.

Jesus encourages, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me… As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” (John 15:4, 9, NIV).

By surrendering to his will, we let Jesus live his life of love through us. God created you to live in unity with him so that you radiate Jesus’ life of unconditional, self-giving, other-centered love.

God Gives You the Freedom to Choose

You can have a relationship with God that begins now and stretches throughout eternity. God wants you to know and enjoy him forever. He longs to embrace you and call you his own.

Jesus cried out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me” (Matthew 23:37, NLT).

Hear the love in his words. Today he is calling you.

“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends” (Revelation 3:20, NLT).

Jesus knocks on the door of your heart. Will you invite him in?

If you desire to open the door and ask Jesus into your life, sincerely say these words to him:

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for your love for me. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. You have bridged the gulf that separated us.

By faith I receive you as my Savior. Thank you for giving me eternal life.

Lord Jesus, make me into the person you want me to be. Be the Lord of my life and live your life in and through me. Replace my sinful nature with your nature so that I love others as you first loved me.

Thank you Jesus.

If you are like most followers of Christ, you have heard and believe that God loves you. But somehow that knowledge isn’t permeating your heart and life experience like it should. Why is that? Why are so many believers not consciously aware of God’s overwhelming love that surrounds them every day?

Consider Jesus’ directions to His disciples shortly before His crucifixion:

As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love (John 15:9, NKJV). This is love passing from God to Jesus to His disciples. And His directive is to “Live in My Love.”

In order to experience all God has planned for us, we must first understand the incredible love He has for us. So how can God’s magnificent love become more real to you?

Think about God’s sacrificial love for you.

The holy, almighty Creator of the universe was willing to leave the glorious throne room of Heaven, endure humiliating torture at the hands of His creation, and die a horrific death on a cross so our sin would no longer be a barrier to the love relationship He wants with us.

The Bible explains, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, NKJV).

Jesus told His disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13, NKJV). Jesus wants you to be His friend and was willing to pay the ultimate price to make that possible.

Think about God’s fatherly love for you.

God not only paid the price for your sin, He adopted you into His forever family. He has chosen to be your Heavenly Father and assumes all responsibility and care for you as His beloved child. You now have family privileges.

The apostle John expressed it like this: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1, NKJV).

Think about God’s generous love for you.

Our Heavenly Father is not just committed to your well-being. He lavishes His love upon you in a myriad of different ways.  Not only did He design you, He also has mapped out a perfect course for your life that will result in your utmost joy and fulfillment.

The Bible promises, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17, NKJV).

No person will ever love you more, be as committed to you, or make a greater sacrifice for you than your Heavenly Father. When you understand God’s incredible love for you, it rightly takes your focus off of trying to fill your need for love through human relationships. It helps you to rest in His love regardless of your circumstances. Human love from imperfect beings will often fail you, but God’s love is solid truth that will last forever. And that is the truth!

The Transforming Truth of God’s Love

Jesus told His disciples, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). The truth will set you free from a loveless pattern of life. Knowing the truth (and believing it) enables you to enter into a much deeper awareness of the amazing love God has for you.

New Testament Scripture reminds us of this truth. Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, NKJV). Transformation happens when our minds are renewed in truth.

Clearly we will come to see God’s love only when our minds are renewed—when we believe the truth of who God is and what He has done for us. Trying (and failing) to obey rules or good laws will not bring us into the promised land of God’s love.

Do you ever wonder what God’s purpose is for your life? Why are you here?

If you are like most Christians, you know God created you for a purpose. While the specifics of what God wants each of us to do will vary, there is a common thread to God’s plans: We are to love.

Love is the essence of God’s character. He loves us and wants to share His nature with us. He wants us to love people just like He does. In God’s amazing provision for us, His love transforms us, making us our true selves, so that we actually radiate His love to others.

Jesus highlighted this love on the night before He was betrayed. He gave His disciples a going-forward command—that came with a promise. He told them, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have love you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35, NKJV).

So how did God provide so that we could obey Jesus’ command to love others like He loved us? How does He make a way for us to be His disciples?

God gives us the LOVE with which to love.

John the apostle explains, We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19, NKJV).

God loved us first. His love for us is perfect and powerful. You are loved by Someone who always wants to be with you, knows what is best for you, will never give up on you and wants you to partner with Him in sharing His love with others.

God is the source of the love. It starts with Him. We can’t generate it or work it up in ourselves. We just give away the love we have received. We love others only by sharing the love He first gave to us. The more we understand the depths of God’s love for us, the more fully we will love others. It is only God’s love that enables s to love those who are unlovely, repulsive . . . even our enemies.

God gives us the CAPACITY to love.

God is love (1 John 4:16, NKJV) and He created us in His image (see Genesis 1:27). We were designed both to be loved and to love others.

As a human being, God made you to be loved and to give love to others. Just as you have the capacity to breathe in and exhale air, you have the capacity to receive love and give it away to others. The hardware for loving is built into your very being.

Sin has disabled the love software, but when we receive Jesus and come to experience God’s love for us, our hearts are restored. We become part of God’s family—and inherit His new nature. As His children, God wants our nature to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. He made us to reflect the family trait of love.

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us (Ephesians 5:1-2, NKJV).

God gives us the VISION which enables us to love.

Our natural vision is colored by the world, but knowing God’s love allows us to see people the way God sees them.

The world gives us one definition of who has worth and who does not. But God gives us a different definition. All are worthy in His sight. God sees beyond the external appearance to the inner person.

Knowing God’s love gives us God’s spiritual eyes so we can see the incredible value of every human soul. When we know God’s love for us, we know His love for others.

God gives us the OPPORTUNITY to love.

Christ lives in you! You are His physical vessel through whom He ministers to people here on earth. By His sovereign orchestration, He places you where He wants you and  brings people to your attention that need to experience His love flowing through you.

You are Christ’s mouth, His hands and feet. People see Jesus in you and feel His love through you. That is God’s desire for you. When you receive God’s love, you also receive the ability and desire to give that love away to others. You were created to be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus—filled to overflowing with the love of God.

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, jus as ours does for you (1 Thessalonians 3:12, NIV).