No Greater Love
Lately, I have found myself asking God how I can know I am loved because I never felt loved as a child. There have been many times when I’ve told God that I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like. So I’ve had to ask God “How can I know I am loved?”
The verse the Holy Spirit continually brings to my mind is found in John 15:13. It states “Greater love has no one that this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (NKJV) I struggled with this verse for a long time because of the lies Satan had deceived me with. For a long time I thought I had killed Jesus because of my sins. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I heard in church that my sins killed Jesus. Would you want to draw close to someone you’ve been told you killed? I sure didn’t! I thought Jesus hated me because God His Father had forced him to take my place and he had suffered horribly to pay the price for my sins. I couldn’t see that Jesus had willingly laid down his life for me and you. I still remember how God exposed this lie and brought me to the truth. One New Year’s Day years ago while I was living in Colorado, I was home hanging out on my couch when I got a text message from someone wishing me a Happy New Year’s. I wished them a Happy New Year’s and then asked “Who is this?” They told me their name but I still had no clue who they were. We both had grown up in Southern California and both had lived in the Bay Area but we had never met. I knew I hadn’t met this person during my So Cal days because I didn’t get my cell phone until years later after I had moved to and lived in Arizona for a number of years. We went back and forth trying to figure out how we knew each other and finally came to the conclusion that we didn’t. It was an interesting exchange and we concluded by wishing each other a blessed year. That night I had a crazy dream based on some of the conversation we had and I knew what the Lord was trying to tell me. He told me that I had NOT killed Jesus because I wasn’t even alive when Jesus died on the cross paying the price for the sins of the entire world. I was so relieved to finally realize that Jesus didn’t hate me and that it was safe for me to draw near to him; that I could do so without apprehension. The Lord has reminded me of other scriptures along the way that make it clear that no one took his life from him but that he willingly went to the cross because he loves me and you!
If you are like me and ended up with a wrong impression of what love really is, I encourage you to meditate on John 15:13 and allow the truth that Jesus demonstrated his love by willingly laying down his life for us so we could experience his love! May His love surround you throughout the weeks to come as you see his act of “no greater love”!
