God’s Love for You

You may be wondering, “Does God love me?”

The answers is “Yes!” even if you think you are unlovable!

John 3:16-17 says: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life.  God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Try putting your name in the blanks:

“God so loved _____ that he gave his only Son, so that when _____believes in him he/she won’t perish but will have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge _____, but that _____ might be saved through him. “

Because God loves us so much – all of us, He has provided a way for us to be together even though we tend to be kind of a mess. The verses below are straight from the Bible and the other comments are primarily from a publication called Steps to Assurance published by Bible Study Fellowship International (bsfinternational.org). It shows us the path God has put in place for us to be united with Him.

Read to the end! The first bit is hard, but there is the best news ever at the end.

Have you ever, as a definite event in your life, received Jesus as your Savior?
Ephesians 2:8-9: “⁸ Because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ. And even trusting is not of yourselves; it too is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good we have done, so none of us can take any credit for it.”

Have you ever thanked the Lord Jesus because He died for your sins on the Cross?
Colossians 1:21-22: “²¹ This includes you who were once so far away from God. You were his enemies and hated him and were separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions, yet now he has brought you back as his friends. ²² He has done this through the death on the cross of his own human body, and now as a result Christ has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are standing there before him with nothing left against you—nothing left that he could even chide you for”

To be sure about your relationship to Christ…
Know that God made you and keeps you. Without Him you would have nothing. He decides what is right and wrong because He is holy, perfect and pure. He is God Almighty. He made you in His image so that you could worship, honor, relate to, and delight in Him. God has authority over your life, and you are responsible to reflect God.
Psalm 100:3: “³ Try to realize what this means—the Lord is God! He made us—we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”
Acts 17:24-31: “²⁴ “He made the world and everything in it, and since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples; ²⁵ and human hands can’t minister to his needs—for he has no needs! He himself gives life and breath to everything, and satisfies every need there is. ²⁶ He created all the people of the world from one man, Adam, and scattered the nations across the face of the earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and when. He determined their boundaries.

²⁷ “His purpose in all of this is that they should seek after God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ ²⁹ If this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol made by men from gold or silver or chipped from stone. ³⁰ God tolerated man’s past ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone to put away idols and worship only him. ³¹ For he has set a day for justly judging the world by the man he has appointed, and has pointed him out by bringing him back to life again.”

Admit to yourself and to God that you are a sinner. You have ignored God and wanted to control your own life. You have disobeyed or disregarded God’s law. You have wanted to decide for yourself what is right and wrong. The consequences of your sin are physical and spiritual death.
Romans 3:10-12: “¹⁰ As the Scriptures say, “No one is good—no one in all the world is innocent.” ¹¹ No one has ever really followed God’s paths or even truly wanted to. ¹² Every one has turned away; all have gone wrong. No one anywhere has kept on doing what is right; not one.”

Romans 3:20: “²⁰ Now do you see it? No one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what the law commands. For the more we know of God’s laws, the clearer it becomes that we aren’t obeying them; his laws serve only to make us see that we are sinners.”
Romans 3:23: “²³ Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious ideal;”
James 2:10: “¹⁰ And the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is.”

Confess your sins and, as much as possible, name them specifically.
Psalm 139:23-24: “²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts. ²⁴ Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”
1 John 1:8-10: “If we say that we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. ⁹ But if we confess our sins to him, he can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we are lying and calling God a liar, for he says we have sinned.“

Believe that Christ went to the Cross for you, taking your guilt upon Himself and enduring God’s judgment in your place. This means that God has forgiven your sins and you are justified (pardoned and cleared from guilt) in God’s sight.
Isaiah 53:5-6: “⁵ But he was wounded and bruised for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace; he was lashed—and we were healed! ⁶ We—every one of us—have strayed away like sheep! We, who left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet God laid on him the guilt and sins of every one of us!”
1 Peter 2:24: “²⁴ He personally carried the load of our sins in his own body when he died on the cross so that we can be finished with sin and live a good life from now on. For his wounds have healed ours!”
Romans 5:8-9: “⁸ But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. ⁹ And since by his blood he did all this for us as sinners, how much more will he do for us now that he has declared us not guilty? Now he will save us from all of God’s wrath to come.“
John 5:24: “²⁴ “I say emphatically that anyone who listens to my message and believes in God who sent me has eternal life, and will never be damned for his sins, but has already passed out of death into life.“
John 14:6: “⁶ Jesus told him, “I am the Way—yes, and the Truth and the Life. No one can get to the Father except by means of me.”
Acts 4:12: “¹² There is salvation in no one else! Under all heaven there is no other name for men to call upon to save them.”

Believe that Christ rose from the dead, conquering sin and death, and that He ascended to the Father in heaven to reign as Lord. This means that Jesus is alive today to help you live a new life that is pleasing to God.
Acts 2:22-24, 36: “²² “O men of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus of Nazareth by doing tremendous miracles through him, as you well know. ²³ But God, following his prearranged plan, let you use the Roman government to nail him to the cross and murder him. ²⁴ Then God released him from the horrors of death and brought him back to life again, for death could not keep this man within its grip.”… ³⁶ “Therefore I clearly state to everyone in Israel that God has made this Jesus you crucified to be the Lord, the Messiah!”
Romans 6:4: “⁴ Your old sin-loving nature was buried with him by baptism when he died; and when God the Father, with glorious power, brought him back to life again, you were given his wonderful new life to enjoy.
Acts 1:9-10: “⁹ It was not long afterwards that he rose into the sky and disappeared into a cloud, leaving them staring after him. ¹⁰ As they were straining their eyes for another glimpse, suddenly two white-robed men were standing there among them
Ephesians 2:1-10: “Once you were under God’s curse, doomed forever for your sins. ² You went along with the crowd and were just like all the others, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air, who is at work right now in the hearts of those who are against the Lord. ³ All of us used to be just as they are, our lives expressing the evil within us, doing every wicked thing that our passions or our evil thoughts might lead us into. We started out bad, being born with evil natures, and were under God’s anger just like everyone else.

⁴ But God is so rich in mercy; he loved us so much ⁵ that even though we were spiritually dead and doomed by our sins, he gave us back our lives again^[a] when he raised Christ from the dead—only by his undeserved favor have we ever been saved— ⁶ and lifted us up from the grave into glory along with Christ, where we sit with him in the heavenly realms—all because of what Christ Jesus did. ⁷ And now God can always point to us as examples of how very, very rich his kindness is, as shown in all he has done for us through Jesus Christ.

⁸ Because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ. And even trusting is not of yourselves; it too is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good we have done, so none of us can take any credit for it. ¹⁰ It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others.

Would you like to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior from sin and Lord of your life? If so, would you pray right now? Perhaps you would like to kneel and pray (Philippians 2:10: “¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth”). This position helps to give a sense of reverent nearness to God. You can pray aloud to Him with words from your heart, or you might want to pray this prayer:

O God, I know I have sinned. I have not obeyed your Word. I have tried to run my own life, ignoring you and your will for me. I have tried to decide for myself what is right and wrong. I know I deserve your wrath and punishment and that I am lost unless you save me. I thank you for sending the Lord Jesus Christ to pay for my sin and guilt. I thank you for raising Him from the dead and giving Him authority over my life. I receive Him as my Savior and Lord. I receive your free gift of eternal life in Christ. I will turn from my sinful life to serve you, my Creator and Redeemer.

Continue your prayer by telling God what you are thinking and feeling.

Trust (be assured) that having received Christ into your life, you are sealed with God’s Holy Spirit and stamped with God’s name on you. You may or may not “feel” different, but you don’t need to. Your trust is not based on your feelings but on the authority of the Word of God and His promises to you.
John 1:12-13: “^11-12 Even in his own land and among his own people, the Jews, he was not accepted. Only a few would welcome and receive him. But to all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them. ¹³ All those who believe this are reborn!—not a physical rebirth resulting from human passion or plan—but from the will of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:17: “¹⁷ When someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a brand new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 1:21-22: “²¹ It is this God who has made you and me into faithful Christians and commissioned us apostles to preach the Good News. ²² He has put his brand upon us—his mark of ownership—and given us his Holy Spirit in our hearts as guarantee that we belong to him and as the first installment of all that he is going to give us.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “¹⁹ Haven’t you yet learned that your body is the home of the Holy Spirit God gave you, and that he lives within you? Your own body does not belong to you. ²⁰ For God has bought you with a great price. So use every part of your body to give glory back to God because he owns it.”
1 John 5:12-13: “¹² So whoever has God’s Son has life; whoever does not have his Son, does not have life. ¹³ I have written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life.”