“God Loves You As Much As He Loves Jesus!” (Part 2) by Nancy Dufresne

When Adam and Eve sinned, their first response under that sin nature was to hide from the Presence of God. That’s the mindset of condemnation and guilt. Condemnation always paints God as being angry with you, but living mindful that God loves you helps keep the door closed to condemnation.

One translation of John 15:9 reads, “I have loved you just as deeply as My Father has loved me, so HOLD ONTO My love.” It’s up to us to “hold onto” the truth of how much He loves us. The devil is always trying to paint God in a different light, but don’t allow the devil, the accuser, to draw you away from the truth that God loves you!

How do we “hold onto His love”? Hold to it in our thought life and with our words.

Of the 12 disciples, 11 of them died as martyrs. John was not martyred. They tried to martyr him, but they never could. Why is that?

In the book of John, he refers to himself as “the disciple that Jesus loved.” He voiced this as a foremost truth in his walk and fellowship with Jesus – Jesus loves me! He would have held to that in the face of martyrdom. Hate was not great enough to defeat God’s love for him – and although they tried to kill him, they couldn’t! His revelation and awareness of God’s love for him always put him on the other side of opposition. John was not focused on their hate, but he was focused on God’s love for him – and that made him untouchable to martyrdom.

Answer condemnation, guilt, and shame with, “You can’t harm the one God loves, for love has already rescued me!” We must focus on that and speak of it often to hold it foremost in our thoughts and our words throughout our daily life. When symptoms try to attach themselves, talk about how love already healed you, so symptoms can’t stay. Tell pain and symptoms that they can’t live where God’s love lives!

We must establish this in us – God loves ME!

God’s love for you isn’t based on you – it’s based on HIM and on His own goodness! God can’t help but love you because He IS love.

When our children were born, we loved them even before they were born. Once they were born, we loved them when they hadn’t performed anything but breathe, eat, and sleep. There was nothing they performed to earn our love. We love them simply because they belong to us. Even so, God loves us simply because we belong to Him. And He loves ALL of humanity because He is their Creator.

His love for us is based on Him – not based on us – for He IS love.

Self-loathing, diminishing or devaluing us, shows a lack of recognizing and knowing the love of the Father for us.

Again, Acts 17:28 reads, “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Another translation reads, “It is through Him that we live, and function, and have our identity.” Our identity doesn’t come from our performance, but from who we belong to.

Another translation reads, “Because we live in the Presence of this God, every move we make is known to Him, and we are dependent upon Him for our very being.” This speaks of our great oneness with Him.

Let’s read what Paul writes in Romans 8:32-39: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (KJV).

Our victories come out of what love won for us, not out of an earned or deserved love.

I like how another translation reads: “Suffering any one of these things is not proof that Christ does not love us, for in spite of all these things that oppose us, we have a decisive victory over life’s difficulties through the care shown us by Christ who loved us.”

How many times the devil wants us to believe that we are facing hardship because God is mad at us. That isn’t true! But what is true is that in the face of difficulties, victory always belongs to us because Love already sent Jesus to secure our victory. We are under the care of the One who loves us! Because His love is unchanging, our outcome is sure – it’s victory!