If, at times, you do not feel or experience God's love, and if much of Scripture seems unclear on the matter of whether God loves you unconditionally, despite all your many failings - how can you say that God loves you?
I suppose you could believe it for reasons of psychological stability and happiness. But isn't a bit presumptuous to say "God loves me" or "God loves you" without any concrete evidence for it beyond a mere psychological want?
I know the scriptures on God's love, and the theology of Christ's atoning death. But I've read three times as many telling His people to shape up or else. Which is fair enough: God is just. There are people living in total, continual sin - who don't believe in Christ - who are sure that "God" loves them.
Even if OSAS can be proved in Scripture, how do you know if you're one of the lucky once saved, always saved folk? And if it's not God's choice, what happens when your faith is at such an all time low that you may as well be an atheist?
By the way, I'm not in as a desperate situation as this OP might indicate. I can normally believe God loves me. But I thought I'd write this in an up time rather than a down time, because when it's hard to believe these truths my writing tends to be born out of frustration and thus unclear.
First off let me just say, I love honest and genuine posts like this one.
One of the obvious things about this is that just someone saying "I love you" doesn't mean much. I know how it is to look at Scripture and the Gospel message and say "I'm just supposed to take your word for it?" and most peoples answer is "yes" that is exactly what you are suppose to do and many former Christians who have turned athiest and agnostic have follwed that line of reasoning and talked themselves out of their own faith.
So then to answer your 100 million dollar question..."how does one know God loves them"
The truest answer I can give to that is that until you get to heaven,you cannot truly 100% know that He does.
You can reason that He does, believe that He does, feel that He does, be convinced that He does, but to truly know it beyond doubt would mean you have to cross over and experience it outside of this place of sojourning here.
Think of it this way...soldiers who are in Iraq for long periods of time...some of them could potentially come to believe after a while that the family they have back home doesn't love them. If they get mail, videos, get to talk on the phone, etc.. then that strengthens their belief that they are loved back home, however if they don't get anything then the opposite is true. I think we can feel that way about God at times where we say...
God you haven't moved in my life in a long while, God you haven't shown yourself in my life in a long while...what really happens is we are told in church that we are to believe outside the circumstance and not expect God to show up in our lives and make Himself known, but overtime if we take this position it begins to eat away at our soul. I know it has at mine whan I have thought like that. Then things would come to a head and I would cry out to God, "God where are you" or sometimes I might even say "God I have had it, I give up" and you know what...He has shown up supernatually in my life every single time that has happened...and sometimes I didn't know it until years down the road looking back upon reflection and realizing it.
It has happened in big and small ways so many times that I have begun to coin a phrase..."When I want to find God, I find the end of me"
Those are some of my personal thoughts on the matter. Not sure if it helps, but I thought I would share to let you know that you are not alone and guess what you don't have to feel bad when you don't feel like you know. It's called faith and it is your choice alone whether to believe it or not. When you choose to believe it (even when you don't know it) there is a tremendous freedom you enter into...a relationship with God where you finally get to say uniquivicoably..."God I choose you" "I choose to believe in you" ...it is like opening your arms wide as you dive off the edge embracing fully in total faith that you will either be embraced by your loving Heavenly Father or your life will end having believed it.
Yes I know there are hundreds of scenarios, sermons, teachings, etc... on God's love, but at the end of the day it is your personal choice whether you choose to believe it and we are faced with that same choice everyday. It is not a question of trying or not trying to believe this or that...it is simply a choice and it is yours and it is mine.
To me that is beautiful...it's my choice. Without that element of choice, then we are robbed of something very personal....the opportunity to respond in love and faith, both to God and to those around us. And it's not a choice founded on emotion, but that resonates from deep within one's spirit.
Concerning knowing that God loves you, knowing in the sense of knowing in your soul, I believe Jesus painted it in the most elequent way I have ever heard.
Luke 12:22-34 (ESV)
"And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?
Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
"Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
In case you are interested, you might enjoy reading this short post on my blog entitled "finding God at the end of me"
Finding God at the end of me « An Imperfect Christian's Blog
Thank you for sharing your heart and your life here. May our Heavenly Father who dwells in unapproachable light make known His love and mercy to you afresh today my brother and may it flow out from within you like water from a well springing out into eternal life.
Blessings,
- Dave
