If you’re not getting a dozen roses and no one shopped the grocery aisle for chocolates and the perfect card for you.
Even if you got the date night out and the romantic dinner and you know you hit the lottery with your Valentine.
There’s something that you can’t shop for and no one can deliver.
You. Are. Loved.
Maybe you need this bone-deep reminder of God’s love letter to you.
You are the apple of God’s eye.
He delights over you with singing.
He knew you before you were born.
You are His masterpiece.
He has engraved you on the palm of His hand.
In ancient times, a master’s name might be tattooed on a servant.
But when was a servant’s name ever tattooed on a master?
Never. It was unthinkable.
“That would mean the master is devoted to the servant.”
The master devoted to the servant. That is God’s love for you.
God is devoted to you.
So much that your name is more than inked on his arm. Your name is engraved — chiseled, hammered — into the palm of God’s hand.
God’s love for you is lavish.
It’s his very character.
God doesn’t choose to love you. It’s not more one day because God feels particularly loving and less another because He’s not feeling it. That’s the human way. That’s not perfect love, God’s love.
God’s love is who he is. It cannot be divided. So when God says he loves you, He loves you with the full measure of his undivided love.
God is love.
And we think we might know what that means if we try hard enough, if we dig into all the verses, if we live long enough and experience enough of God.
We understand but a hint of it. The mere fringes of God’s love.
God’s love is vast and incapable of measuring, far surpassing anything we could ever imagine.
You can never stretch the limits of God’s love. You can never be in a place beyond the reach of God’s love or sink to a place where God’s love cannot plumb.
There’s never a time that God is not acting in love toward you.
God is love and “his love finds expression in everything that he says and does.”¹
God’s actions toward you, personally, are always and only wrapped in an expression of perfect love. Every single event, every circumstance, every wait and closed door and push forward and difficulty and heart ache comes to you through his hands of perfect love.
No circumstance has the final say. Instead, you can face each one squarely and declare that God is love for you personally, “at every moment and in every event” of every day of your life.²
God’s love is rich, great, deep, real, sustaining.
It is a love without fear.
It’s a love that doesn’t deplete you but instead builds you up, cleans you up, lifts you up.
Nothing could even begin to replace it. No experience, no person, no dream, no position or title or place could ever, ever, ever start to measure up to the love of God. Looking anywhere else for the love you can only find in God will leave you hollow every time.
God’s love is Everlasting. Enduring. Abiding. Unfailing. Infinite. Unchanging. Absolute.
And though you receive the fullness of God’s love, you haven’t earned it.
You cannot earn God’s love.
This is real love–not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son
as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 1 John 4:10 (NLT)
God’s love for you is incredible. Jesus left the riches and glory and majesty given him in heaven and clothed himself in flesh to walk with you in suffering.
He loved you enough to go through temptation, ridicule, poverty, hate, hunger, threats, exhaustion, humiliation, grief, betrayal, rejection, injustice, blasphemy, submission, mocking, flogging, derision, crucifixion, wrath, death.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13
God so loved the world.
God so loves you.
Let’s take that slowly.
God. The All-powerful Creator who declares the end from the beginning, who holds the world together, who sustains all things, who sits in judgment of all things, who is complete in himself, complete in happiness and joy and love and purity and has no need of anything or anyone – THE God of THE Universe, the seen and unseen.
Loves. Delights. Rejoices over. Fights for. Protects. Provides. Blesses. Lavishes. Bestows. Unconditionally. Infinitely. Eternally.
You. Unlovely. Wretched. Rebellious. Incapable.
God loves you not because you feel it, but because he declares it.
The Bible tells us so.
God knows you intimately and loves you fully.
He knows your thoughts, your motives, your hidden sins, your cravings, your weakness, your wandering.
And yet you are fully loved with the breadth and width and height and depth of God’s incomprehensible love.
God’s love stretched out on a cross for you, bore the crushing consequences of sin for you, and fulfilled the promise to never forsake you all while being forsaken for you.
Yet the proof of God’s amazing love is this: that it was while
we were sinners that Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (Phillips)
God loves you and because of that he forgives you. He blesses you. He rescues you. He restores you. He provides for you. He prepares eternity for you. He watches over you. He leads you. He disciplines you.
God who loves you will discipline you and will allow those things that make you more like Christ.
And now? You’re not only his servant. God calls you Child. Chosen. Friend. Beloved. Betrothed.
You are his. And He is yours.
And you are inseparable.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39
You are the apple of God’s eye.
He delights over you with singing.
He knew you before you were born.
You are His masterpiece.
He has engraved you on the palm of His hand.
How can do anything less than surrender all to him.
¹(J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p.122)
²(J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p.123)
Simply beautiful. Thank you.
This spoke so deeply to me. We try to know God’s love and yet it is deeper still.
I hear You — I am 66 yr young and waiting for God’s appointed Godly man for me. I experienced too many wrong relationships. BUT so Thankful for Ministries such as yours that Plant seeds of Hope & To Remember the Greatest Love given through Jesus & God’s Precious Plan. Blessings to you for sharing —
Leona, waiting rooms are hard but you are right — fixing our eyes on God’s lavish love helps us wait well.
Wow! Lisa God Bless You Always. You just made me cry.
Me too, Dawn. Studying these verses showed me all over again how immense God’s love for us is.
WOW, Powerful! It took me 63 years to realize that there is NOTHING better than GOD’S LOVE for me!
Nothing. You said it best!
So appreciate your honesty, Lisa, thank you. As a single again woman I’ve learned to buy flowers for myself…whether it’s a holiday or any other day…sometimes you just need some pretty flowers…bought or picked…looking back at you 🙂 Oh, and I do have candlelight meals when necessary as well…nature’s therapy! Thank you for all of your writings…love your perspective on things and love for God. Blessings to you!
That is such good perspective! Don’t wait to celebrate but enjoy the beauty around you. Love that. Thank you for your kind words.
Thank you so much for sharing. I needed this. I too am a widow. It’s not easy. But thank you for reminding me that there is Someone who loves me. This was truly a blessing.
Knowing God is only ever FOR us is one of the keys to processing deep grief. Blessings to you today, Brenda.
Beautiful! Thank you
Thank you Lisa. I feel soooo humbled and sooo fearfully loved. Thank you for that revelation. Sometimes we forget and need such reminders. You Are Loved.
Rebecca, seeing these verses altogether (every bit of this was based in a verse — you should see my notes!) just reveals the immensity of God’s love.
Thank you, Cheryl.
I am reading this post while sitting in my office. A state government office. A cubicle, surrounded by other “professionals” concentrating on their jobs. I can hardly contain myself. This post is so packed with the truth of God’s never ending, never comprised love for me. Everyone needs to read this.
What a beautiful, hope-filled post this is. Full of God’s love. I’m breathing more deeply and calmly after reading it. <3
Beautiful! Simply beautiful, Lisa. You have a fabulous way of drawing us straight to God, into His loving embrace–even when the day or days might be rough.
I’m crying. I needed to read this SO badly. After a very traumatic childhood and bad choices as a young adult, I was blessed with a husband who loves and accepts me in ways I had always dreamed of being loved and accepted since I was just a little girl. But all of the trauma led to self loathing, and I have had trouble accepting that deep love from my husband which feels like some sort of messed up joke: once you finally have someone who really loves you in your life, you’ll be too traumatized to accept it! Ha! However, knowing that God knows me on my very deepest levels, and receiving God’s perfect love is a major key to healing, moving forward, and being able to fully feel loved and deserving of love. God bless you, thank you so much!