How Much Does God Love You?
Pearls of Promise is on vacation. This devotion first ran February 2, 2013, but is still applicable today.
Do you have a difficult time grasping how much God loves you? I know I do because I have a tendency to equate God’s love to people love and when people pull away or say unloving things about me, I think of God in the same terms.
“If they don’t love me, then God must not love me either.”
However, this week while preparing for a message on how God displays his love through animals and birds, the Lord gave me some insight into how much he loves us through a passage in Mathew 10:29:
What is the price of two sparrows-one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.
God knows when any little sparrow falls to the ground. Do you know how many sparrows are in the world? BILLIONS! There is one species of sparrow that contains around twenty million birds and God knows when one of them falls to the ground.
How great is God’s love for us? Greater than we can put our minds around.
That’s why in Ephesians 3:18,19, the Apostle Paul prays the Ephesians will understand the magnitude of the love of God when he says:
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 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.
The Greek word for power in this verse is dunamai. It also translates to “miracle.” It would almost take a miracle for us to grasp how much God loves us. The Greek words for filled and measure have the same root. They both mean “fulfillment.” We need to pray for a miracle to understand how much God loves us. If we ever get that, we will be fulfilled.
Wouldn’t it be nice if God’s love was enough? I know I’m a long way from that. I have this need to be loved by people and when some don’t, I get down. What about you?
So the God who knows when one of his billions of sparrows fall to the ground tells us later in Matthew 10 that even the hairs of our heads are numbered and that we are not to be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrow.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe God loves you so much that when you fall to the ground in despair, he knows it?
When you fall to the ground in pain, he sees you?
When you fall to the ground in prayer, he hears you?
He knows when a sparrow falls to the ground and YOU are worth more than many sparrows.
So the next time you’re feeling unloved by God, remember the sparrow, because you are worth more to God than many sparrows.
Lord, help us to understand how great your love is for us and let it be enough.