“Church” people had always told me “God loves you” but I often wondered, does He really? How could He possibly love someone like me? All my life people have said “I love you” but all they did was use me and abuse me. They never meant what they said. They didn’t really love me. Many times it is because people don’t know how to love themselves.
When I finally let Jesus into my life, I really didn’t believe that He loved me either. I tried to convince myself that He did, but I tested Him repeatedly. I tried to act like I believed He loved me, after all, He died on the Cross for me. (John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.)
And yet I wondered, I doubted, how could God love me when no one else did? My knowledge of Him was based on my earthly father who molested me. I also knew what kind of person I had become. I treated other people as I had been treated. I knew what it was like to carry anger and hate around with me as if they were my best friends. I knew what it was to be selfish and self-centered; after all, if no one else cared about me, then I’d better take care of “me”.
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
At a church service one night God led me to go pray for a young girl, a teenager and tell her that even if nobody else in the whole world loved her, God does. After that service I came home and sat down on the floor and cried. I laid myself out before God, not even understanding completely why I was crying or what was happening. After eventually crying myself to sleep, I awoke the next morning with a great burden lifted off my shoulders, knowing that even with all that has been done to me, with all that I’ve been through and all that I’ve done and all of my spots, wrinkles and blemishes, God loves me. I woke up knowing that the fear I had been carrying down inside me, fearing that once Jesus realized who “I” was, He would stop loving me, despise me and abandon me like everyone else had. But He loves me even if no one else does.
My prayer is that each and every one who feels they have been thrown out with the garbage, abandoned or neglected, can know just how much God loves you. His Word tells us He loves us when it tells the story of His death, burial and resurrection. He suffered greatly to prove His love to us. Even when it is hard to trust people, if we will ask Jesus to come into our hearts, and if we let Him, He will teach us that we can trust Him. It is a process he takes us through, and sometimes a very painful one as He makes us deal with the hurt, the anger and the pain in our lives, in order to fill us with joy and peace. I know.
Does God Really Love Me?
