Honey is sweet. We can know this because we have been told. If we had never tasted honey before however, we would probably be content with the fact that we had been told its sweet. But how much more effective is the team of knowing that honey is sweet and actually having tasted it and confirming that ‘yup, this is sweet.’
This is similar to the love of God. We’ve been told He loves us, by the bible and by others.We don’t really know the sweetness of Christ’s love untill we have tasted it for ourselves (taste and see that the Lord is good). This is why it is of the utmost importance to not just feed our souls on the words of others but to actually experience His word, revelation and love, directly for ourselves. Do we actually know His love, do we understand that He loves us? Do we know what it feels like to have Christ’s love in our hearts or are we just living off the experiences of others? I was listening to a sermon and the person preaching told a story of a woman teaching a class and asking said class to raise their hands if they thought God loved them. The result took me aback a little bit, out of 100+ people, wait for it, only 70 95 TWO raised their hands. No I am not exaggerating. Those who did not raise their hands gave reasons such as ‘I don’t always feel His love’ and things along that vein. It would be very easy for us to judge those people but if we think about it deeply, do we actually believe and know that God loves us? God’s love is not based on our performance, it is unconditional, so even when we don’t feel like we deserve it, it is available to us. This kind of ‘God will love me more if I…’ mindset is a hinderance but sadly it has been engrained in a lot of us. Therefore when we fall short, we give up or beat ourselves up and condemn ourselves as unqualified for God’s love.
See the thing is, we can ask God to give us the grace/help us to/allow us to (however you want to put it) feel His love and feel it some more. This seemed like a foreign idea to me and it may seem so to some of you aswell. This is because before this moment I always felt like God’s love was just..there and I couldn’t really ask to feel it because I believed it was static. 2 Thessalonians 3:5 says ‘May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.’ This shows that we can know Christ yet not fully grasp the concept of His love, or miss the way to His love and that our hearts need directing. From this passage I get that we can delve deeper than the shallow experiences we’ve limited ourselves to of God’s love. All this from simply asking ‘Lord I want to feel your love’ ‘I want to know your love Lord’ ‘Direct my heart deeper and deeper still into your love.’
God Himself told us to ask and that we shall receive. I’m not sure when or where the notion that it is possible to ask God a stupid question came from within me but I have limited my own self to generic requests. There are no stupid questions with God. Ask for a daily experience of His love (I am also going to try to make this a habit) and see what happens. A lot of the time we don’t feel God’s love because we think He’s angry or upset and we associate all these negative things to Him. The bible tells us that He is compassionate, abounding in love, slow to anger. So when we are conscious of sin, just not feeling loved or feeling alone, neglected, undeserving and just out of His love; we should present Him to ourselves as He is presented in the word and boldly go before the throne of mercy. There we can ask for His forgiveness, ask to feel His love, ask for a new heart and so on.
So, do you know that God loves you? Whether you feel it or not, do you know? Whether you see it or not, do you know? Because He does, He really and truly does.