How Do I Know That God Loves Me?

When we face pain and hardship in our life it causes us to ask some hard questions-

• Does God see what it happening to me?
• Does God care about what I am going through?
• Is God on my side?

The writer of the Psalms wrestled with these questions and cried out, "My soul is in anguish. How long, O Lord, how long? Turn O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love." (Psalm 6:3-4)

When you sift these tough questions down to their cores, they are really asking, God, do you love me? There is a longing to know that God not only sees what we are going through and cares, but that He truly loves us.

From the beginning of the Bible, God is pictured as a personal God. He talks with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He talks with Noah, Abraham and many others. He establishes special relationships with people. He gives people laws that show people how to relate to Him and to each other. He saves them from difficulty, delivers them from slavery, does incredible deeds for them, and promises that He will never leave them.

But someone might say, "These are very nice stories, but they don't have a lot to do with me today. Those things happened thousands of years ago. God feels very distant from me today."

How can I really know that God loves me?

The answer is Jesus. No one forced Jesus to become a human being and die for us. He did it out of love. The apostle John says, "This is how we know what love it: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us...We love because He first loved us." (1 John 3:16, 4:19) God loved us enough to send His Son to die for us. Then He sent the Holy Spirit to live in His people so that they could love us too. That's how we know God loves us.

Question to Consider: What does God's love mean to you? How would you try to describe that love to someone else.?