Just a Reminder

Wow.

God is really convicting me to write right now.

He is pulling pretty hard on my heart strings.

I guess that mean He has something He wants me to say.

Here it goes:

God tends to work in motifs, in themes, and there have been a few lately that I guess I should mention.

The first is the fact that He loves and delights in us. He does not find us to be burdens.

Conversation after conversation after sermon after song have all been illustrating this in my life.

It is as if He has been beating it into me with a stick.

The first and easiest way to describe this is in the song "How He Loves Us" by David Crowder. I've spoken a bit about the love of God before and how His jealous is something we should be glad of, well the lyrics go like this:

"He is jealous for me 
Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree 
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy 
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory 
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me. 
Oh, how He loves us so 
Oh, how He loves us 
How He loves us so. 

Yeah, He loves us 
Woah, how He loves us 
Woah, how He loves us 
Woah, how He loves. 

So we are His portion and He is our prize, 
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes 
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking 
So heaven meets earth like a unforeseen kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest 
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way 

He loves us..."

He loves us enough to not only be jealous but to deal with all of my countless crap.

Think about it (I've been doing a lot of thinking about it)

God made us, not because He needed us or because He wanted to feel loved. He already had all of the love He needed, but He WANTED a relationship with us. He DESIRED to get to know us, regardless of the cost. Before He made the Heaven and the Earth He knew I would be a sinner, and the only way He could have that relationship with me would be to die for me.

He knew I would be less than perfect, He knew I would break His heart a million times over, but

it didn't matter.

He loves me to the point that He doesn't care about all of the bad things I've done or will do, but instead cherishes all of the things I do right.

And that is barely the beginning of how He keeps showing me that. 

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."
~Eph. 1:3-6

He gives us EVERY blessing He has. He calls us holy. He calls us His own. 

In fact, He also says:

"You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you." 
~Song of Solomon 4:7

He does not see our flaws, even though He sees all we do. And goodness knows I am flawed. 

Instead He sees us as He created us: blameless and pure. Because He made us blameless and pure once again through His blood.

But this one is my favorite.

"The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you." 

~ Jonathan Edwards

God hates it when we question His love. I mean has He not provided time and time again?

Our God is so wonderful and powerful, yet He is hurt when we choose to not believe all He has done for us. And yet He will continue to do it. He will continue to pursue us until we have no option but to respond.

It makes no sense that He would love us.

All that matters is that He does.

More certainly then the air I breathe He loves us.

And If that isn't enough there is this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

God loves you. 

And He just wanted to remind you of that.

He's certainly been reminding me.