The astonishing extent of God’s personal love, not just for people in general but specifically for you, is the most thrilling and life-changing of subjects. Almighty God is so staggeringly in love in with you that nothing is as exhilarating and empowering as understanding even a fraction of his love for you. Before plunging in, however, I should address two practical concerns that make many of us highly skeptical.

1. I will not lie to you: there are highly perplexing and sometimes even hurtful aspects of being loved by a God who is not only warm but mind-bogglingly better, smarter and perceptive than us. What happens, for example, when the Almighty, who sees into the future we cannot see, loves us so utterly that he passionately wants the best for us, even when we cannot conceive how something we crave and are certain is good would end disastrously for us? What happens when the only way to truly love us is to act in a way we perceive as unloving?

In the name of loving each of us equally, would a good God run roughshod over our individuality, when we each have vastly different needs? Genuine love necessitates refusing to treat everyone identically. Loving two or more people with equal intensity obligates one to meticulously adjust one’s response according to each recipient’s unique needs and circumstances.

Neither our appallingly shallow understanding of what is in our eternal best interest – let alone considering the impact on other people – nor our susceptibility to jealously and mistrust, must be allowed to prevent God from treating us in a way that is truly loving.

You might already be hurting so much over this matter that the thought of God genuinely loving you seems hogwash. If so, you will discover that I not only understand your rage, I refuse to settle for empty platitudes or feel-good half-truths. I will stare down the tough issues that send us reeling. For help with this, please see Why God’s Love Seems a Sick Joke.

2. Few people love with anywhere near divine purity and faithfulness. The sad truth is that most human love is riddled with selfishness and ulterior motives. Some people even use the word love as con artists to manipulate and exploit or to try to justify atrocious behavior. Not surprisingly, traumatized victims of fake love end up feeling suspicious, uneasy, or even worse, about the notion of being loved by anyone. If this describes you, God understands. Feeling this way is less unusual than is often supposed and the best place to start your journey is Feeling Uncomfortable About Love. Otherwise, please continue.

I sometimes wonder if attempting to describe the most magnificent sunset to someone blind from birth would be easier than making this introduction believable to the disillusioned millions of us whose taste of love has so far been largely limited to human imperfections. The bitter disappointment of being let down by humans causes many of us to lose hope of ever finding genuine, selfless love of Godlike proportions – even in God himself.

At least until crushed by the harsh reality of human failings, however, it seems everyone longs to be in love.

Both thrilling and fulfilling, being in love is a continual source of wonder and delight, bringing joy and contentment like nothing else. It makes life worth living; transforming a drab, dour existence into sheer exhilaration. It is what we were made for, even though human relationships allow only elusive, often frustrating, glimpses of it. God alone has the divine perfection we crave in a lover, but what holds us back is the unfounded fear that God’s love for us is shallow – more aloof and clinical than the red-hot passion of someone exciting who is head-over-heels in love with us.

It seems too good to be believable, but the mind-boggling truth is that the awesome God of Perfection, for whom nothing is impossible, is more passionately in love with you – yes, you – than any human has ever felt for anyone. No one can expect to feel convinced of this in just a short webpage, but we have to start somewhere.

We know that fervent love for God and love for all humanity is God’s top priority for us (Mark 12:28-31) and yet we struggle to love as we should. This is largely because we get things back to front. We try to love in order to win God’s love. That’s like trying to drive a car without fueling it. What starts the whole process is a revelation of how stupendously in love with us God already is.

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.

The key to falling in love with God – and staying in love with him and loving humanity as well – is found not so much in trying to love but in simply dwelling on God’s love for us. Discovering and clinging to the truth that God is thrilled with us continually draws us to him and transforms us. It is also the secret to victorious living. As I have written elsewhere:

When feeling defeated, one of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents runs off and falls, what’s the first thing he does? He looks to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, should run into Daddy’s arms for the comfort you need. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively shrink from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arm’s length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort.

Your whole life will light up when you know in every fiber of your being that Almighty God is, to use one of the closest human expressions, madly in love with you.

Nothing is so exciting, fulfilling and heart-warming as being loved by the most wonderful Person in the universe.

No one understands you like your Maker. He alone has been with you every moment from your conception. No one feels your every pain and delights in your happiness like God. No one longs to exalt you and shower you with gifts as much as him.

More than anything else in the universe, glimpsing the immensity of God’s personal, passionate love for you will flood your life with peace and security. Thereafter, neither death nor disaster could ever rob you of the eternal love throbbing within you. Suddenly life will have meaning like never before.

Yes, the God with powers beyond our wildest dreams delights in you, loving you more passionately than the most devoted mother or proudest father or grandparent, and more than any starry-eyed lover has ever loved.

And yet God’s spiritual enemies are relentlessly scheming ways to undermine your awareness of the purity and intensity of God’s boundless love for you. Every Christian on this planet is subjected to this repeated assault. Remaining continually conscious of God’s love for us and convinced of its magnitude is one of life’s greatest and relentless challenges.

The groundless fear that the loving, forgiving Lord frowns on us is like an oppressive fog. It saps us of enthusiasm and weakens our eagerness to cooperate with God in receiving the wonderful things our loving Lord longs for us to enjoy. Contrast this with the assurance that the King of all kings is thrilled with you; that there is a real sense in which you are the center of his universe and that he is selflessly devoted to maximizing your eternal happiness. A glimpse of God’s never-ending love for you will spur you to victory in every area of your life. Your faith will soar and you’ll be inspired to mind-boggling heights of achievement.

So bookmark or note the web address of this page to ensure you won’t lose it and then pamper yourself by exploring every link below. Each is prayerfully crafted to intensify your awareness of, and enjoyment of, the most exquisite love anyone could ever dream of. As you proceed through the links you will find comfort and help in squashing your doubts that God sees you as special and is in love with you; doubts that God is lovable and doubts that he is truly good and kind and selfless and fair.

You wouldn’t believe how excited I am about taking you on life’s most thrilling and fulfilling adventure. If, however, I wanted to help you experience the heights of playing sport, as much as I might wish to do it all for you, much would depend upon you as to how far you go. So it is with life’s greatest adventure: I’ll do my utmost, but the more you put into it, the more astounding the result will be. In fact, no matter who you are, if you exceed my resolve to seek the heart of God, there is no reason why you cannot end up surpassing my enjoyment of God. I challenge you to shame me by doing just that. Obviously, I cannot take you beyond where I have been, but I’d be deeply honored if God granted me the privilege of pointing the way.

Before we take the plunge, we need to pray. Please join me.

Loving God,
I long for you to be the love of my life. I hear of others having gooey feelings about you and dramatic spiritual experiences but at times it seems my only feeling is that of being left out. I want to find you warm and intimate and perfect in all your ways but sometimes you seem cold and aloof and more interested in other people.

If you truly are the God of infinite love, the God whose love is so staggering that it surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19) with the power to go far beyond what I can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20), I dare to ask for love that surpasses my wildest dreams.

Nevertheless, I crave not just excitement and fulfillment but reality. I don’t want to be duped by sentimental nonsense. Neither do I want to be sidetracked by superficiality so that I miss the wonders that you offer. I don’t want to delude myself, nor miss out on the best you have for me. Please open my eyes to your real nature. I want to know you as you truly are and to have the courage and conviction to devote my life to what you reveal. So I seek you for a spiritual revelation, a divine encounter so powerful that, whether it comes slow or fast, it ends up adding an entire dimension to my life. If you are so beautiful that – as they say even of nice humans – to know you is to love you, and if to know you is to truly live (John 17:3), open my eyes to the perfection and stunning beauty of your goodness. Captivate me. If the greatest commandment is to love you, my God, with my whole heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37-38), empower me to seek you tenaciously until I receive a revelation of your love that is so real and vast that I truly fall in love with you.

Not out of pride or selfishness but out of a yearning to thrill you, I want more of you than even what the average Christian settles for. May I become determined to do whatever it takes not to rob myself and break your heart by settling for less than the unique fulfillment and heights of ecstasy and intimacy with you that Christ suffered inconceivable agony for you and I to enjoy.

I’m a little apprehensive of where this might lead but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18) and you are meant to be Perfect Love. If you really are Perfect Love, you alone are truly safe, and I open myself up to you. Come with me as I read the following pages. Empower me to use them as a diving board to plunge deep into spiritual reality.

Before I can expect you to do this, however, there is one nagging issue I need to settle. Facing up to this should not be as hard as it feels since one of the liberating things about drawing close to you is that I can truly be myself. I don’t have to hide my faults because you already know them. Moreover, you say over and over in your Word that you are eager to cleanse to spotless purity all who admit their failings, and that you lift high all who humble themselves.

I cannot expect you to open my eyes to your love if I have blinded those eyes with arrogance. So I need to come clean with you. I have called you God and yet criticized you as if you were the foolish one and I were the one with infinite knowledge and wisdom. I have called you Lord (meaning Master) and ordered you around – “Lord do this, Lord do that” – as if I were the master and you were my slave. In reality, you owe no one anything; we owe you everything. You have given and given and given, and in self-centered arrogance, each of us have taken and taken and taken. You have never wronged us; we have wronged you too many thousand times to count, and yet you have kept turning the other cheek and kept on forgiving, while we have had the hideous audacity to falsely blame you.

It’s not just other people who have done this, Lord: I’m guilty of it, too. I not only seek your forgiveness and cleansing, I ask that you show me anything I need do to cooperate with you in eradicating from my life arrogance, bitterness and any other blemishes that could spiritually blind me; fogging my ability to behold your beauty.

So now, if I have given myself enough time to settle these key issues, come with me as I walk through these webpages.

Realizing how loved of God we are, not only causes our enjoyment of God to skyrocket but it fires every aspect of our spiritual lives. Aware of how critically important it is, I have poured my life into writing several webpages to help you with this.

My most detailed webpage on this subject is particularly important. I believe everyone, from the most spiritually advanced and knowledgeable, to the newest Christian, will benefit. There’s no point saying anything about God unless it is thoroughly scriptural, so I delve deeply into seldom visited corners of the Bible and dig for new treasures in more familiar Scriptures, confirming over and over that God is truly good and warm and kind, and passionately in love with you. More than this, that webpage is my prayer-soaked endeavor to grapple with every possible blockage to deepening your awareness of the enormity of God’s love for you. Before reading it, however, I suggest you read my shorter pages on this subject (listed below). They are part of an enormous Christian website, and since you will need to keep returning here to find the next in the list, it’s a good idea to note the web address of this page to avoid getting lost.

You are loved!

Burst through doubts about God’s love for you and bask in his matchless love.

To God, You Are Special!

A short but powerful look at the intensity of God’s love for you as an individual. To him you are unique and irreplaceable.

Why God Loves You as Much as Anyone

Though it is easy to mistakenly think of oneself as second class, no one in the universe is more important to God than you.

Feeling Loved by God

Help when you yearn to feel God’s love, but cannot.

God’s Tender Love

A short footnote to a webpage bringing together amazing, heart-warming Scriptural insights into the depth and tenderness of God’s feelings for you.

Staggering Bible Truths About God’s love, and How to Believe Them

Long, but highly recommended. It is the detailed page referred to earlier.

Obstacles to Believing You are the Apple of God’s Eye

Doubts about God’s Goodness

The slightest doubt about God’s goodness will deeply erode our ability to know how passionately loved of God we are, and will damage our ability to delight in him and enjoy him.

If key people in your life – perhaps even Christians – have been cold or critical or treated you harshly, it is usual to end up thinking this is how God feels about you. In reality, the forgiving Lord feels warmly and tenderly toward you. He believes in you and sees you in the best possible light. For biblical proof that God longs for you to be kind to yourself, see Hate Yourself? God doesn’t!

The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) – the very heart of God – include selfless love, gentleness, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, and yet the deceiver, the enemy of our souls keeps tempting us to worry that God might be harsh, unfair, quick to condemn, reluctant to forgive, egotistical and lacking in compassion.

For help with this, please see:

Is God Like a Perfect Mother?

Those who through bad experiences with men are apprehensive about what seems the masculine or fatherly side of God can warm to the knowledge that God’s beautiful nature has aspects that in humans would be called feminine or maternal. Both genders were made in God’s image. Warm to the realization that God epitomizes – and far surpasses – the best of both.

Hate God?

No matter how much you might think you hate God, you have simply misunderstood. You actually agree with him more far than you realize.

God’s Wonderful Will For You

The Almighty is not a kill-joy, nor arrogant, nor selfish. No one has your best interests at heart like your Lord.

The Ultimate Revenge

Explains how, at stupendous cost to himself, the good Lord has resolved the seemingly impossible tension between him loving his enemies (including your enemies) and yet passionately wanting to vindicate you and shower you with his extravagant love by fully avenging every injustice you have ever suffered.

Why God’s Anger is Comforting

Surprising insights into why God’s Anger reveals his love. Correctly understood, God’s wrath makes him even more lovable.

God & Suffering

Still more help

Feelings

Rarely do feelings perfectly match reality. There are big differences, for example, between being afraid and being in danger. So it is with being stupendously loved of God and feeling loved.

God intends us to live by faith, not feelings, and it is vital that we do this because such things as medically-induced depression or anxiety (often undiagnosed) or spiritual trials or satanic attacks, deepen or even grossly distort one’s feelings.

For a much deeper understanding of this vital topic, see:

Feeling Loved by God

Listed previously, but if you missed it, you really should read it.

Spiritual Wilderness Survival Guide

Help and encouragement when God seems far away

Fearing God might have totally rejected you

For help, see:

Rejected by God?

This shows powerfully through Scripture how God did not give up on people even when on the surface he seemed to give them no hope of acceptance.

Extreme Grace

About a Christian who kept doing all he could to force God to reject him. A deeply moving testimony highlighting God’s tenderness and extreme patience and love toward us.

Unforgivable?

This links you to vast resources for people riddled with guilt and hopelessness

Feeling you have let God down

For help, see:

Turning Wasted Years into Blessing: Jesus’ Astounding Power to Turn Evil into Good

Encouragement for Christians

Forgiving Yourself

When God seems to favor other Christians over you

I personally identify with people who know God has not utterly abandoned them but are sorely tempted to feel they are not God’s favorite.

1. Seem less favored in non-spiritual ways

Vast numbers have done their utmost to honor and serve God and yet other people seem far more blessed of God in non-spiritual ways. Here’s some help:

* General

God Isn’t fair?

* Health

From Mystery to Ministry, The Role of Sickness in your Life

* Relationships

E.g. Help for Singles

* Material things

Satisfied: The Christianity that Most Christians have Missed

Forgotten Christian Secrets of Prosperity

* Trials

The Surprising Joy of Trials

2. Seem less favored spiritually

Like me, are you sorely tempted to feel spiritually inferior to certain Christians and this gnaws away at you, goading you to feel less favored by God and therefore less loved by him? If so, see Feel Spiritually Inferior or Overlooked by God?

More Help in Fostering Your Love for God

In Love with God

A woman inspires us as she tells of her passion for God despite at one time feeling let down by him.

Jesus, Our Brother, Our Example

The love God has for you is not only like that of the perfect friend, lover, mother and father, but also like that of the perfect brother or sister. To be born again means that, spiritually, we have in our being the very genes of God. Explore the exciting implications.

Love’s Rest

Enjoying God: God’s Cure for Burn Out.

Developing Your Love Affair with God

Expounds all the elements involved in developing intimacy with God.

How to Fall More in Love with God

Although the topic of prayer is featured, this page, and the one it leads to, will significantly help you fall in love with God, with simple, practical suggestions.

Related Topics

Is Your God Too Small? How to Know God Deeper

A Very Important Webpage

When Doubt Knocks

Earlier links above focus specifically on doubting God’s love. This deals with doubting in general.

How to Change Your Self-Image

Our self-image deeply affects our ability to believe we can be loved. We need to see ourselves through God’s eyes, not through our own eyes or our guess as to how other people see us.

Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors

Regardless of one’s gender, one of the many benefits of healing from physical or sexual abuse or child abuse is an increased ability to feel. It has enormous implications for our ability to feel God’s love and to trust and enjoy him.

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Topics Covered in the Entire Site