"I'm not sure I truly believe that God loves me, if I have to be quite honest. In glimpses maybe but not continuously. I don't know ... Others I've met find it very easily to grasp but I just find it very, very, very difficult. It seems to me that you've gone through a process where you really embraced God's love... Was there anything in particular that made you realize that God really loves you? Anything you heard, learnt ... or was it just a long process?" was a comment under my entry "What You Truly Believe".
What a great, honest question! Many things could be said, but since my dear sister, www.ingenkommentarer.blogspot.com, claims that my blog entries are too long, I'll try to make my answer as short as possible, or maybe write a few entries about the same question.
First, I have also met many Christians who claim that they know God loves them. They talk about God's love. Maybe they even preach and teach and blog about God's love. But still they feel abandoned, unlovable, confused, angry, disappointed when the door is closed and they are all alone with their thoughts. So just because they say that they know God's love doesn't mean that's necessarily the truth. Look at the fruit in their lives, look at their world view - do they look at what's happening in the world and in their own life from the perspective "God loves me, and even though this seems difficult, I know his character, and I know he's up to something great"? Or do they, like the world that doesn't know a God who is love complain and say: "there is no hope for them or for me and all is terrible and will never get any better". A Christian who knows God's love never loses hope. Because he knows that God is the God of the hopeless people (like himself!) and the God of the hopeless situations.
On the other hand I've met just a few, very few in fact, where I just know that God's love is what compels them to do and be everything they do/are. My spirit connects with these people. They are rarely the people who get the most publicity. They are rarely the most popular ones. They are often misunderstood. Many Christians look at them as weird and not-connected-enough-to-this world. They are the ones who embrace their brokenness. They know they're beyond repair, and they can only do one thing: put their brokenness, their faults, their weaknesses into the hands of a God who loves them just the way they are! And that's where they get their confidence, that's where they get their life, strength, joy. In Christ. In Christ in them. "Christ in you, the hope of glory", Paul talks about. And that's true. If we want to give God glory, and if we want to experience a glorious, abundant life there is only the way of Christ. To accept and agree with the fact that I'm dead (Galatians 2:20), and that Christ now lives in me and through me.
I believe this was enough for part I - part II will follow shortly:-)
God bless!
Torben
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