Understanding God’s Love      By Jacob Dann

Almost every Christian book I’ve read, song I’ve listened to, bible verse or preach I’ve heard have mentioned something about God’s love. In fact phrases like ‘God loves you’ are thrown around so much they can sometimes go in one ear and out the other. Or sometimes we just simply don’t believe it. I can definitely relate to that one! From the day I became a Christian to very recently I really struggled to believe that God loved me, every time someone would say ‘God loves you’ I would think ‘how!? How could God love me?’ But in the last few weeks I’ve started to understand that God does love me, and it’s changed my life! Now I get it I just want to shout it from the roof tops, which is why I’ve braved it and decided to write a blog on it. So if you struggle to believe God loves you, please keep reading, because when you get it, it really does change your life!

Firstly it’s important you know where that little voice in the back of your head saying ‘God doesn’t love you!’ comes from, it’s the enemy, the devil, and he wants to do all he can to destroy your relationship with God. But it’s also important that you realise that you have God on your side, who really is greater, stronger and wiser! So what do we do when those thoughts come about? Well it can be very easy to just believe it, give in and give up, but believe me, that helps no one! Instead, pray! That can seem very obvious, but it’s not always that easy, for months I would give in and give up but when I started praying regularly that God would help me to understand his love, he did! The more time is spent with God and the more I got to know him, the more I started to understand that he loved me. Think about it this way, in all relationships it takes a while to truly trust the other person, and believe that there love is genuine, and without spending time with them, how are you going to believe this? It’s the same with God, you can listen to all the preaches and songs telling you that God loves you, but until you start spending time with him yourself, it’s likely that it will just go over your head and that’s when those thoughts can start creeping in. Also spending time with God can strengthen our foundations, and when the devil does attack us, we are more confident to go to God and fight, instead of feeling like we can’t go to him.

Like any battle, you need weapons, prayer can be a very powerful weapon, another one that we sometimes forget about is the bible. The bible is a brilliant source that God lovingly created for us to get to know him better, so use it! Just like praying helps to understand Gods love more, so does the bible, and a lot of the time the answers to our prayers can be found in the bible. So how do we use the bible as a weapon against the devil? Well like I already said the thoughts that God doesn’t love you comes from the devil, but there are loads of verses in the bible that say the opposite, these verses are the weapons I’m talking about! Reading verses about Gods love for me regularly have really helped me to believe it, and when those thoughts do come creeping back instead of listening to them and believing them I can go back to these verses and use them as weapons against those thoughts. This is why it is really important to know some verses, so you can fight!

When we fail...

Hello there!:)

This is a spontaneous thing which I figured I’d write about; it’s been a long weekend but I’ll try and get my thoughts out on my screen!

I was reading Judges, today, as part of the bible in a year scheme; and not going to lie it was the part which feels more like a chore, as per usual! But something struck me and absolutely amazed me today, and I feel I should tell you about it. It’s something that has come up time and time again in my head; there is a pattern repeated through this book and others in the old testament. Every time I notice it and stop and think: it just seems more and more amazing.
The point at which I stopped reading and decided it was about to time to whack out my laptop was in Judges 6, right at the start. I’m going to write my translation but yours is probably different It starts off with this: ‘Again the Israelites did what the Lord said was wrong.’
Firstly; just consider this. When I read it I just hold for a second; and realise how.. dirty we are. In God’s eyes. How many times He’s washed us anew, He’s got us out of trouble; but .. we fail again.

Compared to the absolute perfectness of Heaven; we don’t even deserve to be alive! We think that this time; our way is RIGHT and that God’s way is not what we should do. We follow the crowd, do what’s popular because we think we know better than what the magnificent Lord Almighty says . . of course my first point is that God is so amazing that He takes us anyway. But if we continue in Judges 6 ..

Vs.6: ‘Isreal became very poor, .. so they cried out to the Lord.’
This is part two! In our everyday lives, exactly the same as what the Isrealites went through back then. No matter how much we believed our way was better at the beginning; it fails, and well, we’re in trouble again. Lost, with nothing, we turn to the Lord .. and here comes the moment of truth, the full showing of how gracious and merciful our God
is:
Vs 7:’when the isrealites cried out to the Lord, .. (8) the Lord sent a prophet to them’.
See? When these guys were at the bottom of the pit, covered in mud, God didn’t stick two fingers up or say ‘I don’t you so’. He actively sent someone to come and get them out of the situation, why? Because he cares. Just flicking through my bible, there’s dozens of examples:
same book, chapter 3! Twice consecutively; vs 7: The isrealites did what the Lord said was wrong..’ and vs 12: ‘Again the people of Isreal did what the Lord said was wrong..’ and as is the nature of our God, there were active, physical solutions sent by Him: vs.15: ‘

‘When the people cried to the Lord, he sent someone to save them..’

The Lord is definitely trying to tell us something here, and although reading these old books from times gone by may seem like a drag, I honestly believe there’s so much we can get from them. Drilling in these accounts reveals the very nature of our God. He is merciful, He is great, He is forgiving, and He will help you.. to every ‘the people cried out’; there is a ‘The Lord saved them..’. He wants what’s best for us; He loves us so deeply.
I’m not quite sure what the general gist of this blog is; a mixture of how the old testament is alive and relevant to me, reassurance of how beautiful the Lord is, just remembering how He did and still does lift us up out of the mug and the mire..
Make of it what you will. I just try and remember, every single day, how much the Lord has done for me. His beautiful grace and mercy; that no matter what rubbish I get in, I still have an amazing God ready to help me up and dust me off.

:)



Thanks,
xx

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Luv XxBethxX