Choose Love (12 page)

Has God restored something in your life or removed something that needed removing? Has He protected you in ways you did not recognize at the time? Ask Him to show you what you have not yet recognized and thank Him when He does.

One of the primary ways we can identify God’s love for us is by recognizing His promises to us in His Word and how He keeps them. What a comfort to know that everything He tells us is true and what He promises will come to pass.

When a parent promises a child that a particular thing will be done for him, that child does not forget. He
expects
it to happen. He
waits
for it. But if the parent forgets—or neglects to follow through—the child is hurt because he perceives it as a lack of love. Often, this disappointment is so deep that it can still be easily brought to mind decades later as an adult and the hurt is still there.

Keeping a promise to someone is a sign of love
.

God always keeps His promises. And every promise is a sign of His love to us. We don’t dictate to Him
when
or
how
these promises will be fulfilled. It is enough to know they will be.

What follows below are just a few of God’s promises that are evidence of His great love for you.

God Promises That Nothing Shall Separate You from His Love

The love of God is constantly active and present. His love didn’t just happen once. It’s forever moving
in
you and
in your life
. You are never separated from His love. You can’t be. His love is everywhere because God is love and He is everywhere. No matter how difficult life becomes for you, trust that His love is with you always. Only you can put a limit on how much of it you receive.

Paul said, “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 created thing
,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord
” (Romans 8:38-39). This promise is not a small thing.

No matter what is going on in your life, nothing can separate you from God’s love
.

There is no
person
who can separate us from the love of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation
, or
distress
, or
persecution
, or
famine
, or
nakedness
, or
peril
, or
sword
?” (Romans 8:35). God blesses us even when our enemies are attacking us. Our life always overflows with His favor (Psalm 23:5).

This means that because of the love of God revealed to you through Jesus, you are able to conquer the obstacles in your life. He will restore your troubled soul and lead you in the way you should go (Psalm 23:3). Even if you have to walk through a place of great danger, you don’t have to fear because God is with you. Even His correction of you when you get off the path is a sign of His love. His shepherd’s crook will bring you back when you stray. That is a comforting sign of how much He loves you (Psalm 23:4).

His love for us broke the power of death and hell and gave us His Holy Spirit to be with us even into heaven. It means God is always on our side. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

God loves you completely, and there is nothing you can do to change that
.

God Promises to Provide for You

Trusting that God will provide for you is not always easy, especially when you cannot even begin to see how what you need can possibly materialize. I have been in that place many times in my life, and God has come through in ways I could never have fathomed or dreamed of.

When you are convinced God loves you, and you look to Him with love and reverence in your heart, you will not lack anything. The Bible says, “Oh, taste and see that the L
ORD
is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Oh, fear the L
ORD
, you His saints!
There is no want to those who fear Him… those who seek the L
ORD
shall not lack any good thing
” (Psalm 34:8-10). What a remarkable promise to us. How can we
not
recognize God’s love for us in those words?

God is a giver. It
pleases
Him to give us what we need.

Have you ever tried to give someone something you know they badly need but they will not accept it? It is very frustrating and kind of like a slap in the face.
Giving
is not the only sign of love; so is
receiving
. Jesus said, “It is your
Father’s good pleasure
to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). It’s an affront to God to refuse to receive all He has for you. It’s like saying, “I do not want or need what You have for me.”

Jesus instructed us to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). That means when we look to God, He will give us everything we need. When we don’t receive all God has for us, it’s like saying, “I’ll get what I want by myself. I don’t really need You.” But God’s Word says, “
Without faith it is impossible to please Him,
for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that
He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him
” (Hebrews 11:6).

I love that Scripture. I have spoken it often in times of need, and
it always brings great comfort to my heart. We must believe that because God loves us, He rewards us when we diligently seek Him.

God Promises to Transform You into His Image

When we walk with God, He promises to take us from glory to glory as we are transformed into His image. Don’t you love that? He not only wants you to become more like Him, but He will help you do that. “We all, with unveiled face,
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord
, are
being transformed into the same image from glory to glory
, just as
by the Spirit of the Lord
” (2 Corinthians 3:18). He says that if we keep looking to Him—like looking into a mirror—we will start seeing His image reflected back at us. The more we look to Him, the more we become
like
Him.

God also promises to take us from strength to strength when we look to Him to be strong in us. “Blessed is the man whose strength is in You…they go from strength to strength” (Psalm 84:5,7). When we choose to walk with God, we find our strength in Him (Psalm 29:11). When we look to Him, He shares Himself with us.

That is true love.

God Promises to Protect You

When we put our trust in God, He shields us from harm more than we know. The key is to put our trust in Him
all the time
and not wait for disaster to happen. Yet even when we put our trust in God and difficult things happen, we must not let our trust waver, for in the midst of trouble He will do great things in us and through us.

God is a safe place you can always run to when you are in danger. David said that the Lord “will be a refuge for the oppressed,
a refuge in times of trouble
” (Psalm 9:9). And He will never forsake anyone who seeks Him (Psalm 9:10). “For He will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him who has no helper” (Psalm 72:12). When we understand the condition of our soul without God’s presence in our life, we see that we are poor and needy all the time.

This doesn’t mean nothing troubling will ever happen, but it won’t
keep on
happening. And God will do great things in the midst of it.
“He sets the poor on high, far from affliction,
and makes their families like a flock… Whoever is wise will observe these things, and they will understand the lovingkindness of the L
ORD
” (Psalm 107:41,43).

God’s promise to protect us doesn’t mean we can test Him by taking foolish chances. Satan tried to tempt Jesus to test God’s love for Him. He took Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple and said, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone’ ” (Matthew 4:6). Even Satan knows the Word of God enough to use what we
don’t know
against us. Jesus answered him by quoting the Word, saying we are not to put God to a test (Matthew 4:7
NIV
).

When I lived in a “strong city” with danger all around, God protected me and my family. I used to declare the following verse often: “Blessed be the L
ORD
, for He has shown me His marvelous kindness in a strong city!” (Psalm 31:21). But I never tested God on that. I didn’t go out walking alone at night. I didn’t send my children to play in the front yard near the street. I didn’t open my door to strangers, and I taught my children to never do that as well.

God knows what is going on all around us even when
we
don’t. He knows the plans of the enemy for our lives. We must
trust
God and not
test
God in these things. When we look to the Lord to protect us, He makes certain
His
plans for us succeed and not the enemy’s. But we don’t hang around the enemy and entertain his suggestions just to see how well God is protecting us.

God didn’t say we would never fall. He said
when
we do stumble, we will be upheld by Him. “The steps of a good man are ordered by the L
ORD
, and He delights in his way.
Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the L
ORD
upholds him with His hand
” (Psalm 37:23-24).

That means without God it could have been a lot worse.

The angel of the Lord “encamps” around those who reverence God and delivers them (Psalm 34:7). Don’t you love that promise? Wouldn’t you like to look into the spirit realm for even a moment to see the angel of the Lord encamping around you? But God wants us to live by faith and not by sight—faith that He protects whom He loves and who also love Him.

Enjoying the presence of God in the daytime, living in the safety and peace He gives us, allows us to sleep better at night
.

God Promises to Hear Our Prayers and Answer Them

Think of how much you love your child or children—or whomever you love most in this world. Well, God loves you even more because He has greater capacity to do so. He doesn’t have the capability to not love because He
is
love. He cannot be what He is not. Jesus said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11). He answers our prayers because He loves us.

Keep in mind, though, that He doesn’t promise to answer our prayers exactly the way we prayed them, but rather according to His will (1 John 5:14-15). Every promise of God has a condition that must be met. The most common conditions are that we must have faith in Him, and live His way, and believe His Word.

Whenever we are overwhelmed, we must remember that God is not. We must look to Him at those times and stop focusing on our situation. That doesn’t mean we live in denial about it. “Denial religion” is not faith. We don’t have to pretend our circumstance have not happened, as some do. We must be honest with God about our fears. David prayed, “Hear my cry, O God; attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth I will cry to You
, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I
” (Psalm 61:1-2).

Jesus said, “Whatever things you ask in prayer,
believing, you will receive
” (Matthew 21:22). All we have to do is believe Him—that He is the Son of God and that He loves us and wants to answer our
prayers. It is not our faith that does it. We are not having faith in our faith, as if we have anything to do with it. We have faith that He hears us and will answer our prayers according to His will, and that we are the recipient of His love when we pray.

God Promises to Deliver Us from Fear

The Bible tells us about the joy, blessing, and happiness of all those who fear God.
Fearing God means to reverence Him and fear what life would be like without Him
.

“Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You…
You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the plots of man
” (Psalm 31:19-20). He blesses those who reverence Him.

That is
godly
fear.

The other kind of fear is not of the Lord. It is a spirit that can torture us if we allow it to grow in our heart. “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of
power
and of
love
and of a
sound mind
” (2 Timothy 1:7).

The
power
is God’s power, which He shares with us.

His
love
comforts us and takes away our fear.

A
sound mind
means having clarity of thought, good judgment, and the ability to make wise decisions and choices. It means having self-control and not being out of control in our actions and behavior. It means having the mind of Christ.