How Could God Love ME?

 “I pray that you … may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” - Ephesians 3:17-18

 Two weeks ago, my oldest daughter Kayla graduated from high school. Because of COVID, her graduation ceremony was delayed a month and a half. But my wife Christine and I were so proud to finally see her don her cap and gown and receive her diploma. And knowing that soon she will be leaving for college, in recent months I’ve been thinking of Bible verses that I want to pass on to her and pray for her.

One passage that’s been on my mind a lot is Ephesians 3:17-19. Starting halfway through verse 17, it reads: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” This is one of my prayers for Kayla. I want her to be firmly rooted in God’s love, and I want her to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. But I don’t want her to simply “grasp” God’s amazing love; I want her to know His love personally.

Most people would agree that the most popular verse in the Bible is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Over the years that I’ve been in ministry, I have had more than a few conversations with people who believe that God so loved the world. But they weren’t so sure that God loved THEM.

Sometimes we doubt God’s love for us because of our own insecurities. At other times we doubt His love because our sin seems too big to forgive. And honestly, at times we just have a hard time wrapping our minds around the notion that the Creator of this huge universe would care about us. I’ll bet that at some point in your life you have wondered: “How could the Creator of the universe love ME?”

Well, to be honest, it’s completely illogical for the Creator of the universe to love you. After all, you’re NOT a big, important person. Your influence in this world is rather puny. Your natural resources are few and far between. And, just like the children of Israel, you’re stubborn—you do your fair share of obnoxious complaining and grumbling. In many ways, you and I are both unlovable. So, how could God love me? How could God love you?

Here’s the answer: God loves you, not because of who YOU are or what YOU’VE done. God loves you because of who HE is. When we doubt God’s love for us, it’s inevitably because we’re taking our eyes off Him and focusing on ourselves—on our own insecurities and shortcomings, our own sins and our insignificance. But that’s the wrong place to focus. God’s love for me has NEVER been primarily about me. It’s always been primarily about Him. 1 John 4:8 says point blank: “God is love.” And because God is love, He is going to love me no matter how obnoxious, unlovable and undeserving I am of His love. How could God love us? Because God IS love, and loving undeserving sinners like you and me is what He does best.

God’s love even transcends life and death. And that’s great news for you and me, because according to God’s word, our sins have made us all dead to God. Ephesians 2:1-3 says, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world…gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” Colossians 2:13 says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.” So, there’s no doubt about it. Our rebellious sins have made us spiritually dead to God. But Jesus is ready and willing to raise us back to life.

But why would he do that? Because in spite of ourselves, God loves us. In spite of ourselves, Jesus loves us. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” What a glorious verse! While we were still being selfish jerks, Jesus loved us and died for us anyway. While we were still breaking God’s laws and doing whatever we felt like doing, while we were still rebellious and stubborn and complaining and arguing, while we were completely undeserving and unappreciative and unlovable—Jesus loved us and died for us anyway. No wonder the Apostle John writes in 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”

My prayer for my daughter is one of my prayers for you as well. I want you to be firmly rooted in God’s love, and I want you to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. But I don’t want you to simply “grasp” God’s amazing love; I want you to know His love personally—“that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Dane Davis is the Pastor of Impact Christian Church. Please join us for our live outdoor worship service Sundays at 9 a.m. at 17746 George Blvd. in Victorville. Or, join us online at 10 a.m. on our YouTube channel (Impact Christian Church) or on Facebook.

Don’t Be a Cold Christian

 “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”

– Revelation 2:4

We’ve all met them. At some time or another you may have even been one. I’m talking about cold Christians: Christ followers who do all the “right” things without a bit of love. Many a marriage has fallen apart—not because there was an affair, abuse or abandonment—but because there was no love in the marriage. And just as a marriage can’t survive for very long without love, a church can’t survive very long without love. As Bible scholar Leon Morris puts it, “A church can continue only for so long on a loveless course... If they repent they may yet be saved. But if not, there is no hope.”

In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, Jesus delivers seven brief letters to seven different churches in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Christ praises six of these seven churches for doing certain things very well. And his longest list of praises is delivered to the Christian Church in Ephesus. In Revelation 2:2-6, Jesus identifies seven different practices of the Ephesian Christians that are worthy of praise. In short, they practiced good deeds, worked hard, persevered amidst difficulties, refused to tolerate wickedness in the church, discerned false teaching, endured hardship, and hated the practices of those who tried to peddle heresy among their members.

By any estimation, this is an impressive list. Most churches would be ecstatic to have Christ shower them with these compliments. On a scale of 1-10, the Ephesian Church looked like a “10.” But even though it appeared to be a picture-perfect church on the outside, the church had something seriously wrong on the inside. Jesus bluntly tells the Ephesian Christians in verse 4: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”

What does Jesus mean by this rebuke? Well, there are a couple possibilities. According to Jesus, the greatest command in the Bible is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30-31). So, “you have forsaken your first love” could indicate that the Ephesian Christians were going through the motions of a Christian who truly loved God, but deep down …they really didn’t. They may have had some admirable motives for living out their religion so well, but love for God wasn’t one of them.

Or possibly “you have forsaken your first love” indicates that the Ephesian Christians had forsaken love for people as a top priority. Years earlier Jesus had told his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). The Christians in Ephesus had been taught well to embrace God’s love and know God’s love and reflect God’s love in their personal relationships. But somewhere along the line, their love for people had grown cold. Although they looked good on the outside, their perseverance, doctrine, and ministries were loveless. They didn’t do the good things they did out of a deep love for Christ and others. So, despite how good their deeds may have looked to outsiders, the truth was: The Christian Church in Ephesus was dying. And only repentance and a re-prioritizing of love could bring it back to life.

I am reminded of the powerful words written by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” And Paul concludes the chapter with this short but powerful insight: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

As I consider the Ephesian Christians’ lack of love, a few words come to mind: unfeeling, robotic, mechanical, impersonal, loveless, lifeless and cold. Perhaps you could think of a few other words to describe a church that does the right things but does them without love. Regardless of the words that come to mind, I hope and pray that my Christianity will never be these things: unfeeling, mechanical and impersonal. I hope and pray that your Christianity will never be these things: loveless, lifeless and cold.

Friends, just as a husband and wife must guard themselves against a loveless marriage, Christians must guard themselves against a loveless church. We must be very careful. As we persevere through trials and endure hardship and faithfully teach God’s word and carry out some great ministries, we must make sure that we do it all in love. Cold, loveless Christianity is a dying Christianity. And a cold, loveless church is a dying church. The Apostle Paul was right: When it comes to living out our faith, “the greatest of these is love.” So, let’s make sure that we love Christ and others with everything we’ve got. If we don’t, our Christianity is nothing.

Dane Davis is the Pastor of First Christian Church in Victorville. For more information,

visit www.fccvv.com  and join us for our worship celebration Sundays at 10 am.