God Loves You, Yes YOU!

I gave my life to The Lord and received his Holy Spirit on December 20, 2013. Since that time the veil has been lifted from my eyes and I have begun to see the world in a whole new way. I see blessings in every moment, reasons to be grateful in some of the worst circumstances, the miracle of creation and child birth, the Holy Spirit's work in my own life, overwhelming sadness when I see others in pain, and so much conviction in regards to sin. My heart has been cracked wide open, and love for everyone has begun to pour forth. I find myself praying for people all the time, for all those who are still living in darkness, and I continually pray that the world will see less of me and more of Jesus coming out of Kim every day. I'm learning the significance of worship, I'm learning to put God first every day (though the Devil still tries to convince me other things are more time-sensitive/important), I now crave time in his Word more than anything I used to, I'm looking into teaching Holy Yoga because I can't stand teaching yoga anymore without talking about God and using it as a form of worship, and all that's great! Yet in all of these things, all positive, I still struggle with some of the most basic principles of Christianity. I still strive to earn grace, to feel worthy of his love. I wonder why God even cares about me. Sometimes the sin I see swallows me whole and I wonder why he ever gave us a second chance, why he hasn't given up on us yet. But then I remember that God IS love. God loves us more than we could ever fathom, he loves us no matter how terrible our sins are, and no logic applies to his love. He just loves us. Period. But since his love isn't of this world and doesn't really make "sense," that's been the hardest thing for me to accept.

Growing up Catholic, I always heard that God loved me but I never honestly felt his love. I didn't know his love or feel personally wrapped in it. Even after being saved I still didn't feel it. I have prayed a lot that he will reveal his love for me to me, and he has definitely been starting to. He has lead me to some awesome scriptures about his love for me, like Luke 12:7. This scripture talks about birds, and how five sparrows are sold for two pennies. Creation, the work of his hands! We may not place much value on it these days, but God still does. In Luke 12:7 he says, "And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows." Imagine - God knows the exact number of hairs on your head right now! He created you and he knows everything about you, even if you don't know or acknowledge Him. Amazing!

He has also been opening my eyes to how much he loves me by my own love for my child. If I, a sinful human being, am capable of loving my son so much and wanting nothing but the best for him and to protect him from any and all harm, how much more does God love me?! Our love is so imperfect but his isn't! He's God! He created the heavens and the earth, he parted the Red Sea for his people and rained bread when they were hungry, he washed away creation with a flood but gave us a second chance because he is merciful, and he sent his son Jesus into the world to teach us about his love and then watched him die to pave a way for us to come back to him. There's nothing he wouldn't do for us, nothing, he just wants us to be with him. And that was revealed at the very beginning of the Bible, in the story of creation. God could've stopped with the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, full of foliage and livestock, but he didn't. He created mankind. Why? Well it certainly wasn't because he needed us ("The God who made the world and everything in it...is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything" Acts 17:24-25), and he wasn't lonely or in need of company, since he already had the Son and the Holy Spirit ("Let us make man in OUR image" Genesis 1:26), so why on Earth are we here? Because God wanted children. Children increase your love and joy a hundred fold, don't they? He wanted children to love, children to reflect his glory, and children to worship him. He just wanted us to BE with him, to fellowship with him, and that is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden before the fall. It was a perfect world. But when sin entered the world and man began to live for himself rather than God, fearing that God did not have his best interest at heart (which is still at the root of most sin today), things got bad fast. Sin took over, the world became more and more evil, and the Lord decided to wipe mankind off the face of the Earth. But thanks to one man, Noah, and his faithful family, God gave mankind a second chance. He didn't have to, but he did, because he'll never give up on us. He'll never give up on his master plan, the restoration of our original relationship with our creator. He loves us no matter how hard we push him away or how evil we become. All he wants is for us to seek his forgiveness for ours sins, acknowledge him as our Lord, and be him in this life, living our lives for him, as he originally intended.

Sometimes it still seems unbelievable to me that God loves ME. Who am I, a little, sinful human, that he, the creator and Lord of all, should love me? Yet he does, and we need to ask for grace to accept than even if we don't understand. We need to let ourselves be loved by God and trust in his faithfulness. "For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever" (Psalm 117:2). If we believe in the truthfulness of The Word, then the fact that God loves us is not debatable. Yet we often feel as if God has left us or doesn't love us. Why? I've noticed that we often feel that way when we become overwhelmed by life, when things seemed stacked against us and we become weary. We as humans immediately think God is "punishing" us or that he doesn't love us, which is impossible since God IS love. So why do we think that way? Well, we very often forget that we live in a fallen world full of sin. That's not what God wanted, but a choice that we made. And we are all making choices each and every day that are sinful, and those choices have natural consequences. I had a baby out of wedlock, and although my child has been the greatest blessing of my life, it was much more difficult to have my baby before I was married, settled in a home, in a career, and with a stable income. I have struggled a lot, losing my whole life as I knew it before I was ready, my soon-to-be spouse and I had no time to enjoy just being a couple or to travel, and we had one heck of a time planning a wedding with a baby running around. Mankind is so quick to point the finger at God when bad things happen but God doesn't cause our sin, we do. We live in a world full of sin where bad things happen every day. God allows many of the sinful things that happen to take place, however, because he uses them to bring us to Him. Did you ever notice how blissfully unaware of Christ many of us live until something bad happens, and then suddenly we are acknowledging God and pleading for his help? It's amazing. He not only uses sin to bring about good (countless examples of this in the Bible, like Joseph and his brothers), but he also wants us to come to Him in the tough times so that he can give us everything we need to rise above it. Scripture is full of verses telling us this, like "Give all your worries and cares to the Lord, because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7); "I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!" (John 16:33); "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28); and "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (Jeremiah 29:11). God guarantees we will have tough times in this world, it's the natural consequence of living in a fallen world where we make selfish and sinful decisions every day, but if we come to him, he will help us! He is our helper, our redeemer, our restorer, our savior, our everything! We often, especially Catholics, think of God as the one who sends us bad things to discipline us. I've caught myself thinking I'm being punished by him all the time. But the truth is, God isn't mean, he's JUST. His righteousness is not like the laws and righteousness of this world, where we teach "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," so thinking he's out to get us when we do something bad is silly. Yes, God teaches us, he disciplines us, and he rebukes us, but all of that is out of LOVE. And that makes all the difference.

Hebrews 12:10-11 says "Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our own good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Bad things often happen as a result of sinful decisions, but God uses the tough stuff to teach us something, to draw us nearer to himself. The Holy Spirit has been speaking to me about his lately. He's been teaching me about God's love through my love for my son. My son is still very little, but when he does something he shouldn't, I discipline him. Why? Because I love him, and I want what's best for him. When he stands up on tables or chairs, I tell him to sit down. When he doesn't obey, I scold him. Why? Is it because I'm on a parent "power trip," because I want things done my way, or even because he isn't listening to me? No, it's because I don't want him to get hurt. Yes, I want him to listen to me but not entirely "just because I said so," it's because I know what's best for him. I know what could happen if he falls. My child is exerting, more and more every day, his right to say "no," his choice to do what he wants. He is exerting his independence and enjoys (evident by his devilish grin) doing precisely what he knows he shouldn't sometimes. What he isn't thinking about, is what I know that he doesn't know. I know that if I let him run down the stairs unassisted, he'll fall and get badly hurt. I know that if I let go of him in the pool the way he wants me to, that he could drown. I know a lot that he doesn't, mostly, I know what's best for him. Isn't this how it is with God? Doesn't he know so much more than we do? Doesn't he know what's best for us, even when we think that's something else? Did you ever have a job you really wanted that you lost or didn't get, or a relationship that failed, and it hurt or disappointed you so much? Maybe you even prayed that it wouldn't happen that way, but it did anyway. At the time, you just couldn't understand why. Later, however, the blinders were removed. A better job, or a better person came along, one that would've passed you by completely if you were still in that place you thought was best at the time. God knows what's best for us, so he asks us to trust him. It's hard, I know, but we need to ask for grace to do our best. The devil loves to come into our minds and wage a war against Christ, just as he did in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were instructed not to eat from the tree of knowledge but the serpent urged Eve to disobey God. "He said to the woman, 'You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil'" (Genesis 3:4). The serpent pinned man against God in a very clever way, making it seems as though God wanted all the knowledge for himself so that he could stay on a higher playing field than Adam and Eve, and tempted Eve by making her think that she would be just like God once she ate of the fruit. So she did. And so do we, each and every day. We allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that God doesn't have our best interest at heart. We begin to focus more on our circumstances than on Him. We then try to play his role, making decisions for ourselves and acting hastily out of our own free will. What's important to remember, however, is who gave us that free will.

God wanted us to have a free will because he wanted us to choose, rather than be forced, to love him and serve him. That's true love. He loved us so much that he gave us the choice, he let us go and hoped that we would come back to him. But very often, we don't. Many of us take our free wills and run, living our lives for ourselves rather than for God. It's so amazing to me that God gave us free will and to me, it makes so much sense why he did. Would you want to be in a relationship with someone who didn't want to be with you? Would you want to spend your life loving someone who didn't love you back? Of course not. And you're just a human! So why would God, creator and Lord of all, want that? He doesn't. He wants us to WANT to be with him. Doesn't it mean so much more when your spouse does something for you, or your kids make something for you, just because they wanted to rather than because you asked or told them to? It just makes sense.Yet even when we choose not to love God, not even to acknowledge him, he still loves us. It makes him sad, yes, but he has hope. His hope is unfailing. In fact, he allowed his only Son to leave him and come into this world of sin to die in our place, on the cross, for our sins so that we don't have to pay that penalty ourselves. Because of our sins, we must die. But God found the way out. He sent Jesus into this world with a new covenant, a new promise, a hope for sinners everywhere! He sent Jesus with a message of salvation. If we only accept that Jesus died for us on the cross, accept him as our Lord and Savior, and ask his forgiveness for our sins, we are saved from our sins. It's that simple. It isn't anything we've done, but what he has done, because he loves us. His grace paved the way back for us, because all he wants is for us to be with him. And that's all he's ever wanted.

So next time you get to thinking that God doesn't love you, remind yourself that's the Devil talking. Because God IS love and he loves you more than you could possibly imagine. All you have to do is accept that. And the next time life gets hard and you're temped to use your own free will to get what you want, stop and pray. Ask for God's help to accept his will and to trust him. He will use everything for good, everything, if you'll only just let him be God and trust him to do so. Ask for his grace to grow in his love each day, showing him that you love him by spending time with him, worshiping him, and coming to him with any and every need. Because the truth is, that job you just got, or that surprise bonus check you really needed, that stranger who just stopped to give you a jump, that person who consoled you when you needed it, that was God. He works through everything and HE sends us exactly what he need when we need it most. We tend to see God and the things of this world as separate, but they aren't. Think of The Hunger Games. Each thing that happened to the people in the games was controlled by the people sitting in the control room, even though it seemed as those things were just randomly happening. Realize that God is God all day, every day, and he is working through everything to draw you nearer to him, to bless you, to help you, to restore you, and to hold you. He loves you perfectly; it's a love we've never known and cannot possibly fathom, so just rest in it. Accept it. And let your Father, your true Father, cradle you in his arms. Because the truth is, he's been holding you all along, he's just been waiting for you to realize it.