Christian Spiritual Growth

GOD LOVES YOU

Abide in His Love ~ Be Empowered to Change

Do you know that God loves you? Not just in your head but in your heart.

Do you experience His love for you moment by moment? If you don't, search the Word for His love letters to you—specific verses that speak directly to you about His love for you—they are there.

Even when you fail, even when you feel miserable, God loves you. Do you believe that? Many Christians don’t. Way deep down, some believe that only a perfect performance merits God’s love; but yet we know in our minds that while we were yet sinners, Christ demonstrated His love for us through His overcoming death and resurrected life.

Let’s examine two reasons Christians think they experience His condemnation more than they experience His love.

1. PERFORMANCE

   Often throughout our Christian lives, we find that "doing" for God gives us a security and so we think we are loved because we are doing for Him. When we don’t meet our own self-imposed standards or meet some other man’s or woman’s standards, we feel condemned by God.

   Performance images not only cloud our minds but also stunt our growth, especially in relationship with the One Who will free us to love. We begin to think and believe that God doesn’t love us because we aren’t meriting His love—How could He love us when we are failing to perform?

2. RELIGIOUS LIFE

   Religious life, simply defined, is bargaining with God rather than walking with God. People who practice religious life believe that if they do such-and-so, then God will bless them with such-and-such. They create images to worship rather than worship their Creator. They place their faith in these images rather than faith in God. When their images fail them, which they always will, they believe God doesn’t love them.

God will not interfere with your freedom to choose. He wants your yielded heart, freely given, and He has abundant grace for your journey. Many people need to walk through the performance mindset and/or the religious life mindset in order to come to the end of “self” before they see their need for relationship with God rather than performing for God.

Homeschooling is often one tool God uses to bring moms to that place of surrender. Marriage is another.

Like prodigal children, God is waiting to meet you as you turn from your “self”-ways to Him. Father-God will run to you and bless you as you seek Him, just like the prodigal’s father. What love!

As you turn/repent, read God’s love letter to you and feed His Spirit-in-you. As His Spirit grows, you will begin to worship the Lord moment by moment and He will confirm He loves you. You will begin to see through sound doctrine that His love for you never fails and He is in the process of transforming your life for His glory and your benefit because He loves you so much. From this place—building from the gospel that Christ loves you right where you are—you will be empowered by that love to change. Knowing that He loves you—and experiencing that love moment by moment—you will begin to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

RENEWED MIND ~ CHANGED HEART

As your mind begins to be renewed, you will start to see a lot of ugly stuff coming out of your mouth and in your actions which reflects your heart. God uses your relationships and circumstances mightily in this process of change.

Relationships and circumstances bump your heart, and whatever comes out of your mouth or however you act in response to that bumping shows who you really are deep down. Seeing Who He is alongside who you are humbles you (to say the least). As you yield your heart to Him and confess your sin, He will purify you from all unrighteousness. He will make you new… because He loves you!

KINGDOM VESSEL

As He leads you and loves you through this process of change, of growing up into Christ your Head—your Source for real Life (not the false, superficial security you had experienced in the past)—He is also preparing you to love others with that same unconditional love He showered on you and with that same grace-filled leading with which He led you. He is preparing you to function as a part of the Church, His Body. What a vision!

So when you see your helpless state (I don't know how to parent my children; I don’t know how to walk with You, Lord; I’m miserable and failing), remember that you are not without HOPE! The hope is that as you yield to the Holy Spirit, He will change you. How can He do that? All He needs is a heart that is willing to respond to His love and leading.

If you have that willing heart right now, where do you begin with change? The answer to that question will be unique to each one of you. Ask yourselves these questions: Where do I keep making excuses for my flesh? For example, "Grace doesn't come naturally to me," "I've just never been an organized person," "My parents were controlling; that's why I'm controlling." Although these things (and others like them) may be true, they are things that the Lord's empowering love and life can change in you.

And when you allow Him to change you, you may be breaking generational sin cycles. What a vision! Sin broken for generations to come. Thank You, Lord!

"How do I begin to change?"

Through your willingness and obedience. Choose one area that He brings up over and over again in your life and begin to yield that one thing to Him. Perhaps He might have you do a Bible study on the word "grace," for example. Perhaps He wants you to make a menu for the month and stick to it. Perhaps he wants you to identify areas where He is showing you that control is ruining a relationship (husband, perhaps?). One simple thing at a time, baby steps of obedience, will set you on a path to change.

Will you fail? Absolutely! What will God do when you fail? Will He yell at you and tell you how much you annoy Him? Of course not!

He will come alongside you and pick you up and show you how to try again, holding your hand along the way, cheering you on, correcting, exhorting, encouraging, loving. Whatever He does for you, that's what He wants you to do for others in His Body. Learn from Him. Become more like Christ. He will love you through the process of change.

Wherever you are in your journey with the Lord, He loves you.

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