The idea that God loves me has seemed inherent from the moment I was born. As natural as knowing my own name or my birthday, I’ve never not known that God loves me. But about three years ago, I realized that I didn’t actually believe that. If I’m honest, I more often believe that God is annoyed with me. God pities me. God is disappointed with me. Or at best, God just tolerates me. And the more I talk to other believers, regardless of our individual stories, we all have some version of that deeply rooted doubt that God really loves us.

A few years ago, I had a mentor who asked me this question: “Do you enjoy God? Not, do you love God, but do you even like being with him? Do you think he enjoys you?” I didn’t even have a category for enjoying God. It never seemed to matter. I’m supposed to love God, I should love God. It was like asking if I enjoyed my boss . . . that’s not the purpose of that relationship. After explaining this to my mentor, she smiled gently and said, “Well, that’s a terrible relationship to have.” She was so right. If one of my friends came to me and said, “I’m dating this new guy but he just tolerates me and I’m only dating him because I feel like I have to,” like, we know that’s not going to be a sustainable relationship, right? So why do we settle for that mentality when it comes to our relationship with God?

It’s ironic to me that so many movies center around a protagonist who overcomes their insecurity by 1) knowing who they are and 2) believing in themselves. I don’t know about you, but I’m insecure because I know who I am and I believe in myself. I actually need to know who God is and believe what he says about me. I think about Matthew 3 when Jesus is being baptized and, at the very end of the scene in verse 17, God jumps in: “A voice from heaven said, ‘This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.’” Before Jesus overcomes temptation in the desert, before he starts his ministry, before he kills death with death and redeems all of creation; this is the moment God chooses to publicly declare his affection and joy for his child.

So let’s consider that alongside Ephesians 1:4–5: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” From the beginning, long before anything you’ve ever done good or bad, God loved you and chose you to be unified with Christ and gave you every spiritual blessing (v. 3), including status as a dearly beloved daughter, who brings your Father great joy. And it was his great pleasure to do it. What a different portrait from a God who just tolerates you.

This is the perfect place to wrap up our Choosing Truth Over Lies series because I wonder if we would struggle so much with all of the others if we really believed the truth of this one. If we believed in God’s love, we could receive his forgiveness. We would know that he is enough to fill all our needs and desires. We could trust him with the worst parts of ourselves knowing that his love is not determined by our performance. This is the lie that holds up all the others. I’m asking the Holy Spirit to heal our unbelief and tear out the foundation, and that all the other lies would start to fall away with it.

Whitney Maness

For the Women at Grace Newsletter Team

Take time to read the complete passage and reflect on God’s love for you:

Mathew 6:25–34

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?

1 John 4:7–21

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 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.

Ephesians 1

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Nathalie Richard

For the Women at Grace Newsletter Team

Can you receive a gift well? With thanks and appreciation even if you didn’t deserve or earn it? Can you accept it without having to understand everything about it? Whether you feel or believe it, you know what the Scripture above says! God LOVES you. Let this newsletter be an invitation to surrender whatever within your heart struggles to accept the free gift that is God’s love! This gift doesn’t make sense to our human understanding: you can’t get or earn more of it, and you can’t pay God back for it, because his love is so abundant and free. Jesus’ death on the cross wiped out our debt to him for this gift.

1. What keeps you from receiving God’s love? What passage of Scripture or part of the gospel (mercy, hope, freedom) do you need to walk through again to help you receive it?
2. A friend of mine once asked me, “Picture God’s face in your mind; what is his expression?”

For me, his expression is one of expectation and conditional love: celebration over the victories he gives me, and frustration and disappointment over my sins and weaknesses. This year, I have committed to memorizing Psalm 16, and verse 11 comes to mind for me to fight off this false face of God I see: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (ESV). This verse is like a sword, piercing through the false face I see and revealing God’s true face towards me: one of fullness of joy and eagerness to share his joy with me. And that fullness, or overflowing, complete joy, is the presence of God, which is ours to partake of in Christ!

Allie Black

For the Women at Grace Newsletter Team