If you are asking yourself, can He really love me? I know He loves others, but can He really love me? The answer is YES, YES HE CAN AND HE DOES! God does love you!
I know that there are some of you out there that may feel like you have done things that God can't forgive and maybe you don't feel deserving of His love. None of us are deserving of His love, but that's what makes His love so special - He loves us with an "...everlasting love..." (Jeremiah 31:3) no matter what. It's always there even if we reject Him it is there. We may not deserve it, but it is there. And, there is nothing that He won't forgive. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9 All we need to do is tell Him we are sorry and ask Him for forgiveness and He not only forgives us, He makes us clean. How great is that! The Bible tells us that there is joy in heaven when we come to Him! (Luke 15:7 -even the angels are joyful -Luke 15:10) Did you know we are called God's sons? "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God..." 1 John 3:1 And, for us ladies we are His daughters- we are all God's kids. You know when a man and a woman have a baby it is a very special thing! The baby is theirs and is a part of them. When someone adopts a baby it is very special, too- that baby is "chosen" by the couple. Did you know that God "chose" us? (you) "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you..." John 15:16 And we are made in His image: Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them." We are adopted into the family of God. How great is that! Jesus called God Abba, Father right before He gave His life for us. (Mark 14:36) It means Pappa or Daddy. Now I would expect Jesus to use it because He is God's son, but we are told in Romans 8:15 that we are to also use this loving name for God. We have been adopted into God's family, He chose us. God sees us as His kids and He is our heavenly Father. Now if you are still thinking that you have done something that God can't forgive, remember when He said He would forgive us our sins? He didn't add that there were any He couldn't forgive, He just said He would forgive us when we ask His forgiveness. He also didn't say that there were only a select few that He would forgive- he was talking to all of us- to me and to you. Did you know that God doesn't play favorites? The Bible says we are all the same in Jesus.(Galatians 3:28) God doesn't care what color our skin is- He doesn't care if we are male or female- He loves us all the same. I love that about Him! We are all the children of God. (Galatians 3:26)
Have you ever thought about the people in old times that the Bible talks about? Some of these people made a lot of mistakes, but God forgave them and He loved them. King David was one of them. This was during a war time. King David was on the roof of his house and as he looked out he witnessed a woman (Bathsheba) taking a bath. She was very beautiful and David liked what he saw. He sent for her and slept with her. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah. She became pregnant by David and David sent her husband off to war in the front of the battle and he was killed. Then he married Bathsheba. (2 Samuel 11) Of course his actions and choices were not without consequences, but later David was deeply sorry for his sins and told God and God forgave him. (Psalm 51) God loved David and God even referred to David as "a man aftermine own heart." (Acts 13:22) None of us are without sins in our past none of us is perfect, but God loves us just like he loved King David and if we go to Him and ask Him to, He will forgive us and help us. We cannot fight temptation on our own- only with His help.
Now I want to tell you about Saul. Saul threatened, persecuted and slaughtered God's people. But, one day day as he was traveling a light from heaven shined on him and he heard a voice say to him "Saul, Saul, why persecutest me?" When he asked who was speaking to him The Lord said "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest...". Saul went on to become a great worker for God. His name was later change to Paul. You can read Saul's story in Acts 9.
I wanted to share these stories with you, so you would know that there is always hope and that God "will" forgive and that God loves you! Does it make him sad when we goof up and make mistakes and decisions that aren't what we know He would have us choose? Yes, but He never stops loving you. He does not like our sins, but He always loves us. He has loved you since day one. It's hard to compare things here on this earth with His love because things here are not perfect like God's love. The closest thing I can think of would be- do we stop loving our kids when they mess up and make mistakes or bad decisions? No, absolutely not. We may not like what they did, but we still love them. That's how it is with God- He loves us no matter what- with a perfect and everlasting love. He may not like what we did, but He always loves us.
Think about what this kind of love- God's love- can mean to you. I know what it means to me and I wouldn't trade it for anything.