We’ve all heard those cliché lines where some rugged dude tells his wife that he loves her more today than the day they got married. How sweet like a cherry dipped in chocolate drenched in syrup surrounded by kittens wearing sailor hats. Maybe you married folk have said something similar to your significant other.
God’s not like that.
God doesn’t love you more today than He did yesterday. His love isn’t like ours; doesn’t “grow” how ours does for one another.
As we get to know someone better, struggling and triumphing with them, our love for them naturally magnifies with every passing day.
But what about God? A God who doesn’t know you better with every passing day because He already knows it all.
How could He love you more tomorrow if He already knows everything about you today?
At first thought, I am indignant. How dare God not love me more today than He did yesterday or ten years ago? Why the heck am I striving after Him if His love for me doesn’t grow as mine for Him does?
But then there’s the flip-side of God’s love.
God also doesn’t love you any less than He did yesterday. Despite our envy of others’ talents, looks, or stuff. Our hatred for their talents, looks, or stuff. Our lust for lesser loves.
When our sorry prodigal ways bring us back to Him, He’s already holding out the robe to cloak our naked bodies. Has a magnificent feast already laid out for our ravaged stomachs.
His love never went anywhere while we strayed. It neither decreased nor increased. It was already at full-throttle.
When I think about my countless failures and devotion to other so-called loves, this thought astounds me: that He never stopped loving me any less. That He was always ready for me to return into His love. A love that never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me.
And God’s love even remains on the table for those who persistently reject it.
As an often relationally incompetent introvert, I can’t fathom putting forth the energy into loving someone who either disregards or despises my very existence.
Can you imagine that? Continually loving someone at full-throttle who wants nothing to do with you?
I cannot.
And yet God transcends all our miniscule notions of “true love.” His ultimate expression of love was nailed to a cross 2,000 years ago, and it forever stands whether we accept it, reject it, or repetitively stray from it. Whether we’re Baptists, Catholics, non-denominationalists, atheists, or Satanists.
Whether I’ve been to church nearly every Sunday of my existence or viewed pornography dozens of nights before bed.
Whether we love Him in return or not, we’re all equally His “favorite.”
God doesn’t love you. Not in the way Webster or The Bachelor translates that liquified word.
He loves you. Loves you in ways we can’t begin to comprehend. Unfathomable ways that cannot possibly fit within the confines of a four-letter word.
Tell me something about your relationship with God. Looking back on your life, highs and lows, what does His love mean to you?
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