As I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about what I believe in, I can find myself spinning as I try to sort things out. I realize I don't want to get stuck pondering my beliefs about God. I want instead to belong to God.
I'm not sure what that really looks like, but I want to explore the idea.
I do know when I have spent time with Him and am confident in His love for me, I am more my true self and more free.
This all stems for me in deepening my understanding of God’s love for me .
In a fantastic, but meaty book, The Gift of Being Yourself , David Benner writes:
“I am convinced that God loves each and every one of us with depth, persistence and intensity beyond imagination. God doesn’t simply like you. Nor does God simply have warm sentimental feelings toward you just because you were created in the Divine image. The truth is that God loves you with what Hanna Hurnard calls “a passionate absorbed interest”. God cannot help seeing you through the eyes of love “.
“Even more remarkable, God’s love for you has nothing to do with your behavior. Neither your Faithfulness nor your unfaithfulness alters God’s love in the slightest degree. Like the Father’s love in the parable of the prodigal son, Divine love is absolutely unconditional , unlimited, and unimaginably extravagant “
Do you believe this? Does it ring true for you?
As this message of how God loves me increasingly resonates as Truth for me, and as I spend time sitting with God, I feel like I belong to God. I know in my deepest self this phrase of my identity statement is true. ”I am a connected child of an infinite and intimate God”.
As I move into deeper certainty of His love for me, I become more solid. I am more joyful, more free, less judgemental and more able to love those around me.
Anne