I like the comparison between all his children claiming to be the favorite and John calling himself the apostle that Jesus loved and neighbor calling Christ “my Jesus.”
Surely, Jesus removes all shame from being broken.
There is much for us to do in this life but self-loathing and self-condemnation are not on that list.
Just because we can’t feel God’s love for us doesn’t mean God has stopped loving us.
If God’s love never stops, why can’t we always feel it? … Being loved is definitely not the same thing as feeling loved.
If Jesus were to choose a place where he and you could meet…might He choose your place of deepest suffering?
If someone we care about seems distant from a sense of divine love, we can follow this pattern—by doing things that bring us closer to God ourselves and then doing things that bring us closer to them—an unspoken beckoning to come to Christ.
But perhaps you feel a long way from the love of God. Maybe there is a chorus of voices of discouragement and darkness that weighs into your thoughts, messages telling you that you are too wounded and confused, too weak and overlooked, too different or disoriented to warrant heavenly love in any real way. If you hear those ideas, then please hear this: those voices are just wrong. We can confidently disregard brokenness in any way disqualifying us from heavenly love—every time we sing the hymn that reminds us that our beloved and flawless Saviour chose to be “bruised, broken, [and] torn for us,” every time we take broken bread. Surely Jesus removes all shame from the broken. Through His brokenness, He became perfect, and He can make us perfect in spite of our brokenness. Broken, lonely, torn, and bruised He was—and we may feel we are—but separated from the love of God we are not. “Broken people, perfect love,” as the song goes.
You might know something secret about yourself that makes you feel unlovable. However right you might be about what you know about yourself, you are wrong to think that you have put yourself beyond the reach of God’s love. We are sometimes cruel and impatient toward ourselves in ways that we could never imagine being toward anyone else. There is much for us to do in this life, but self-loathing and shameful self-condemnation are not on that list. However misshapen we might feel we are, His arms are not shortened. No. They are always long enough to “[reach our] reaching” and embrace each one of us.
Jesus knows all about being broken, that may be why His reach is all encompassing.
There is much for us to do in this life, but self-loathing and shameful self-condemnation are not on that list.
When we don’t feel the warmth of divine love, it hasn’t gone away. God’s own words are that “the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but [His] kindness shall not depart from [us].” So, just to be clear, the idea that God has stopped loving should be so far down the list of possible explanations in life that we don’t get to it until after the mountains have left and the hills are gone!
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So if God’s love does not leave us, why don’t we always feel it? Just to manage your expectations: I don’t know. But being loved is definitely not the same as feeling loved, and I have a few thoughts that might help you as you pursue your answers to that question.
The fact that feeling loved is not the same as being loved applies not just to love from God but also to love between people. We also need to remember that just because we love someone does not guarantee that they can recognize our love.
If you do feel filled with love in this season of your life, please try and hold on to it as effectively as a sieve holds water. Splash it everywhere you go.
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