37102 Accept God’s Love

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.