Living Loved

I'm coming to understand that Living Loved boils down to simply living in the Father's affection. I have known since I was a child believing in Jesus that God loves me. "God so loved the world!" John says. That was my first realization. Then, I discovered in short order that God so loved me that he gave his one and only Son to die for my sins. My performance-oriented religious upbringing taught me, however, that I needed to continue to make sure he loved me so that I lost no ground with Him and would not end up losing his favor, and my own soul in the process. An imagined dark cloud of performance-based condemnation hovered over every aspect of my living. Essentially, I was earning his grace, or at least imagining that I was. An oxymoron if there ever was one! Grace, clearly defined as God's unmerited favor, or favor that we cannot merit or earn, was something I was trying to merit or earn! The dots were not connecting.

The next stage of revelation came when I discovered that I truly did not need to do anything to keep his love. I had his love already. That was the very essence of grace itself. I have his love. I will always have his perfect, undying, unconditional love. What I also didn't realize until later was that God actually likes me! Seems like that ought to be evident, but for me that was a great revelation. Not only do I have a Father who is all-out in love with me, but I have an Abba [Daddy!] who in fact likes me. What a dynamite combination! An Abba-Father who loves me with a perfect love, who likes me ... as I am, and who continually draws me into his perfect love which provides every thing I need to grow into the character he wants in me.

So, what does it mean to live loved, to live in Father's affection? Here are five key truths my family and I are attempting to grasp ...
1. You have a Father who loves you more than anyone on this earth ever has or ever will barr none.
2. As Philip Yancy said in his book, What's So Amazing About Grace, there is nothing you can do today to make God love you any more and nothing you can do today can make him love you any less.
3. God is not disillusioned with you because he had no illusions about you in the first place. WHAT a revelation! How could a sovereign, all-knowing Creator God, who has perfect knowledge, past, present and future, not know what he was getting into when he lavished his love on us (1 John 2)?! He knew exactly what he was getting into and still got into it.
4. Because shame, guilt and condemnation have no role in helping you live in God’s life, he has removed them in Christ and does not manage them for your growth. This one to get your arms around. Whew! It's a good one, but it will take some unpacking to explain and understand.
5. God wants to make himself known to you daily and teach you how to recognize his voice. This is the very essence of what he has given to us in the Holy Spirit. A natural question to arise out of this is, "Am I good enough to hear his voice every day?" No, I'm not. But, the better question is, "Is God able to get through to me everyday with what I need to hear for that day." DUH! Is God unable to do anything?

These are beautiful truths about the nature of God that I have been growing into during this past year or so. I will try to unpack them a bit as I continue to blog, but just want to get them out in front here so that maybe, if you haven't already, you can begin to grasp the depth of our Father's affection and love for us.