Knowing God's Love

This post was originally delivered as a message to my church, Formation, a non-denominational church in SLC. You can listen to the recording on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

A lot of my earliest memories are from attending the small home church at my grandparents house in a little town called Holmes City, MN. There was no Sunday school or children’s ministry, so us kids would have to sit quietly through hymn singing, a session of corporate prayer, and a very theologically heavy sermon.

But if we survived that long, the unmistakable sound of coins jingling would revive all the attention spans of the littlest members such as myself. Because we all knew – it was time to recite bible verses.

The rule was, for every memory verse you reviewed, you would get five pennies. But if you had a brand new bible verse, you could get a whole dollar!

The excitement was real, let me tell you.

I think the very first verse I memorized was, “Jesus wept.” If you know me at all, that might explain a little bit about my emotional tendencies.

The second verse I memorized was, “God is love – 1 John 4:8."

It was one of the first songs I learned: "Jesus loves me, this I know – for the Bible tells me so."

It was the theological foundation of my faith. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

However, it wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that I made a shocking discovery…

God likes me.

When I came to that realization, I remember feeling silly that it felt so profound. After all, that was one of the first things that I learned about God, that he loved me!

It was then that I began to realize that my perception of God’s love was nearly exclusively rooted in an intellectual, theoretical belief of God’s love, rather than an experiential, deep knowing of His love.

One of the pivotal moments that led to this realization was hearing the pastor of my church say again and again that God was not in a hurry. I began to believe that God was patient with me and not anxiously awaiting the day when I would get my life together.

After moving halfway across the country and experiencing an answer to prayer so big and so profound that I could not possibly explain it away by coincidence, I began to believe that God was kind.

And if anyone can be patient with me and kind to me despite knowing all my flaws, it must mean that they like me.

Thus, I was left with the unmistakable realization that God not only loved me because the Bible told me so, but He honestly liked me, too.

I would guess that I’m not the only person who has allowed my perception of God’s love to be purely intellectual. In fact, I think most of us in the western Christian church can relate to some degree. We’ve been told our whole lives that God loves us, but we rarely feel His love toward us, unless mediated through perfectly coordinated worship events (or maybe even a prophetic word during a prayer night, if you were those super-spiritual Christians /sarcasm).

So today, I’m returning to the basics: in 1 John chapter 4.

1 John is a small book in the bible whose author is not actually confirmed, but is generally believed to be one of Jesus’ disciples John, dubbed “The Disciple Jesus Loved.” Which sort of feels like the youngest going, “Dad loves me most!”

1 John (and subsequently 2nd and 3rd John) were written to a community of house churches that John oversaw that had recently gone through a crisis. People were leaving the church; there were deceivers – or “anti-Messiahs” as John called them – leading people away from the Gospel and teachings of Jesus. There was tension between the church leaders and conflict between the believers as they struggled to navigate the divisiveness and identify the true believers from the deceivers.

In light of all this conflict, and in an effort to encourage and strengthen the believers in these churches, John chose to focus on two big ideas in the book of 1 John:

1. God is light

2. God is love

We’re going to focus on the second one today: God is love.

Before I dive into the verse, allow me to nerd out for a second.

The word “love” appears 46 times in all of 1 John, and over 50% of those mentions can be found in chapter 4 alone! In the passages leading up to verse 16, John defines love by using Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as a template for the kind of love that God both has for us and expects from us as we are more and more transformed to the character of Jesus. And in verse 16 of chapter 4, John writes…

“We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.”

I want to focus your attention on the phrase, “to know and to believe.” The Greek word for “believe” here is pisteuo, which means “to think to be true” and carries a connotation of intellectual faith. This is the camp that most of us reside in at any given moment. We believe that God loves us on an intellectual, factual, theological basis. It’s an intellectual knowing.

The Greek word for “to know” is ginosko, which means “to know (absolutely) in a great variety of applications – to be aware of, or feel.” It carries the implication of using one’s senses, or of knowing for certain by experience.

A great example of this is cats.

Whether you own cats or have just seen the montage videos, you know that cats love pushing things off of tables. They know what’s going to happen when they knock that cup off the table – it’s going to hit the floor. You know they know, because when you say their name, they look you dead in the eye and do it anyway like the sociopaths they are.

These cats know gravity. They experience it. They are well-versed in its effects on unsuspecting cups.

However, they do not have an intellectual understanding of gravity.

To be fair, I don’t either… but we all know gravity to be true because we all experience it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

So that’s what John means here when he says “to know.” “To know” is to experience it as an undeniable truth. It’s an experiential knowing.

So what John is saying here, “to know and to believe the love that God has for us,” shows us that there are two sides to our perception of God’s love for us: an intellectual knowing, and an experiential knowing.

Which leads me to my big idea: God invites us to know His vast love for us both intellectually and experientially.

Notice the double-sided approach to knowing God's love for us. It's both intellectual and experiential. But here's the problem: most of us settle for a single-sided approach.

As I stated before, most of us go through life without regularly experiencing/feeling God’s love for us.

We say God loves us, and then we feel shame when we mess up. We say God loves us, but we don’t trust Him to be kind to us when we’re hurting. We say God loves us, but we are fearful of His reaction to our insufficiencies.

This single-sided approach to knowing God’s love for us negatively impacts our relationship with Him, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationships with others.

When I was a young teenager, there was a girl in my circle of friends who I thought would be a good fit to be close friends with. I spent a significant amount of energy and thought into wanting and trying to build a friendship with her, but I always got this vibe that – although she was always pleasant toward me – it felt like she didn’t really like me. And that – whether true or not, it doesn’t matter – made it impossible to build a friendship with her.

The same goes for our relationship with God. If we feel like He barely tolerates us – whether that’s true or not (spoiler alert, it’s not true) – it makes it impossible to build a close, meaningful relationship with Him, because we do not trust that He likes us. We do not trust that He cares.

Our perception of God’s love for us can also directly influence our perception of ourselves.

If I feel like God is waiting to condemn me, I will consistently find ways to condemn myself. If I feel like God is unable to like me, I will deem myself unlikeable and find it hard to believe that anyone – even myself – could really like me. These beliefs about ourselves only serve to perpetuate the inaccurate view that we have of God and lead us to believe that God is impatient, irritable, or at best, apathetic toward us.

Furthermore, when we fail to fully know God’s love for us both intellectually and experientially, we are unable to fully pour out His love for others, which is the most fundamental way that we represent God to the world and to each other.

Think about it – I would guess that a large portion of people who grew up in the church could point to a specific instance where a person claiming to represent God and His word to us, said something incredibly damaging that ultimately shaped our perception of God Himself. Whether that was through weaponized or misinterpreted Scripture from spiritual leaders or role models, or a father or father figure that permanently skewed our definition of what a father means, other people play a huge role in how we perceive and interact with God.

It goes the other way, too: You play a role in how others perceive and interact with God, and if you do not fully know and comprehend God’s love for you, how can you communicate that to others in how you live, speak, and act?

So the question is, how in the world can we begin to know and to believe the love that God has for us? How can we move from simply an intellectual knowing to an experiential knowing, as well?

There are three ways that we can begin to know and to believe God’s love for us:

1. Sit with Scripture
2. Walk with others
3. Look for evidence

Let’s dive in.

Sit with Scripture

This goes beyond just reading a passage that says “God is love,” and saying “ok yup, got it, moving on.” What this means is sitting with God’s word and allowing the Spirit of God to impress the truth of it onto your heart.

One practical way of doing this is through the practice of Lectio Divina.

If you’re unfamiliar with this term, Lectio Divina, or “divine reading” is a contemplative practice that dates back to the early centuries of the Christian Church and later became a monastic practice. Essentially it looks like sitting in a quiet space and reading a short passage multiple times, shifting your focus slightly each time, and asking God to speak to you. It allows you to slow down, absorb the passage, and provides space for God to speak to you through His word.

If you want more information, check out this series called Positioned for Change in which Pastor Ryan Huguely dives into the spiritual practice of Lectio Divina in a more detailed manner.

Why is sitting with scripture so important?

1 - It is anchored in truth. While it’s important to experience God in our own personal ways, it’s equally as important to ensure that those experiences are rooted in truth. Anybody can go out in the middle of the desert, starve themselves, hallucinate, and claim they had an experience with God, but that’s not what we’re after. Scripture is a carefully crafted, divinely inspired tool that God primarily uses to reveal His character to us.

2 - It is one of the primary ways in which God speaks to us and meets with us. The more time we spend meditating on God’s word, the easier we will be able to recognize his voice and trust His character.

So, start by Sitting with Scripture.

The second way we can come to know and to believe God’s love for us is to “Walk with others.”

Walk with Others

God loves to use people to manifest the healing work He is doing in other people. When He created mankind, He placed us over the rest of His creation and gave us a job of caring for it. When Jesus left, He gave us His Spirit to work in us and among us, and gave us the command to go and make disciples of all people and nations. God’s grand vision for humanity is a collaborative one. It’s important to surround yourself with people who embody God’s love for you.

The problem is, not all people are equally safe. As I mentioned before, much of our early experiences of God that formed our perception of His character and love for us were mediated through harmful experiences with imperfect – and sometimes outright malicious – people.

However, what’s hurt in community can only be healed in community. It’s very clear throughout the entire Bible that we were not created to be isolated. So, here are some practical ways to come to know and to believe the love that God has for us by walking with others today:

1. Participating at church. There's a reason the author of Hebrews exhorts its readers to not quit meeting together. God designed the church to not only be a place to consume knowledge about Him, but to live out our relationship with Him and with others. It's important to find a community that fosters this kind of participation and fellowship with each other.

3. Find a spiritual director. A spiritual director is someone to help you discern how to develop a deeper relationship with God. This can be very powerful and effective especially for people who really long for a deeper relationship with God but are struggling to let others in. Learn more about finding a spiritual director here.

4. Ask God to bring safe people into your life, or to bring you to others who are safe. God wants you to have a safe, loving community, and He can orchestrate the most coincidental meetings imaginable. If you feel alone or like you’re lacking a safe community, ask God to provide one for you.

5. And lastly, look for ways to be God’s love to those around you.

There is nothing more eye-opening and humbling than being a parent to a small child. I thought I was a pretty patient person, a pretty easy-going individual, a pretty sweet and loving person.

Until I had a child. And I realized that no, I was not patient. In fact, I had never even known the meaning of patience until it was stripped from me by this tiny human. I learned so much about God’s character as my Heavenly Father through just living life through the lens of a parent.

You don't have to be a parent to do this. We all can learn so much about God’s character when we try to live life looking for ways to be God’s love to those around us.

They say that one of the best ways to learn something is by teaching it. So, ask God to help you teach others about His love through how you interact with them.

So we’ve sat with scripture, we’ve walked with others, and now the last way we can begin to know God's vast love for us both intellectually and experientially is to look for evidence.

Look for Evidence

Have you ever done something nice for someone without prompting? Maybe you cleaned up your partner’s mess, or maybe you mailed a card to someone or made a meal to share.

I remember one time, when my older sister was in college, I decided to weed the garden for her. We lived on an old farm and always had a large vegetable garden while I was growing up. My older sister was the only one of us kids who really has a green thumb, so she had taken it upon herself this year to be the one responsible for the garden.

I noticed she had been a bit preoccupied with school lately and the weeds had started taking over the garden. One afternoon, I decided to go out there and weed the entire garden for her.

I was so excited. I knew this would be a huge weight off of her shoulders and couldn’t wait to see how surprised and happy this would make her! I worked for quite a long time, to my recollection, and if I didn’t get the whole garden done, it was at least a very large section.

After my sister got home, I waited for her to go out to the garden and see the beautiful transformation I so graciously gave it.

I waited, and I waited, and I waited…

For days I waited for her to notice. Finally, she went out to the garden, but by that time, all the weeds had grown back.

I was so disheartened, I don’t think I helped her weed again that whole year!

It can be so discouraging when we do something kind for someone and it goes unnoticed. It doesn’t mean that what you did wasn’t loving, it just means that they’re completely oblivious and should maybe check on their garden more often.

It’s the same with us and God. Just because we don’t often see His acts of love, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Just because we don’t often see His acts of love, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

When my husband and I moved to our apartment here in Utah, it was the first apartment I’d been to without a washer and dryer unit. For over a year, I hauled all our laundry down three flights of stairs, across the apartment complex to the laundromat, and then all the way back up the stairs. At first I felt like a pioneer woman with a basket of clothes on my hip, but that disappeared after about two trips up and down the stairs.

When I started thinking about trying to potty train my toddler, the thought of making that laundry trip every day made me so incredibly overwhelmed. I made my husband well-aware of the need for a washer and dryer, but we were not in any financial position to buy a new set, so he graciously began scouring all the sell sites in the area.

Months went by. I remember scrubbing poopy pants out in the bathtub, and finally bursting out in a frustrated prayer: "I really, really want a washer and dryer! Can you please just... give it to me??" I remember thinking, "I rarely ask for anything! Can't I just have this one thing??"

Granted, not the most polite prayer, but it was authentic.

Within the same week, my husband found a set at a scratch and dent store.

We didn't have a way to haul it from the store, so for a couple of days we held our breath as we arranged a time and transportation. Finally, my husband and a couple of wonderful helpers hauled a beautiful washer and dryer set up 3 flights of stairs. As they walked in the door, I remember thinking, “Wow, you actually gave it to me!”

It felt like such a small thing for God to care about and listen to, but it struck me as such an incredibly kind gesture, that that very moment began to shift my perception of what it meant to be loved by God.

Now, it would have been easy to discredit that entire experience by saying, “Oh, we were bound to find a washer and dryer some time. That probably would have happened even if I hadn’t asked God for it.” And to be honest, I was tempted to write it off as a coincidence.

But James 1:16-17 says, “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Cynicism is the kryptonite of faith. As soon as we start explaining away these coincidences and turning a blind eye to moments like these, we start to discredit God’s love for us and His acts of goodness in every day of our lives.

Besides, even if I hadn’t prayed that prayer, God could have still given that to us. Even if I had prayed a much "nicer" prayer and we still didn’t have a set, God would still be worthy of all my praise and gratitude.

There is no such thing as giving him too much credit or thanking him too much over something that was just an "accident." God gives us good and perfect gifts, whether we notice them or not.

Here are three ways you can begin to look for evidence of God’s love and goodness in your life:

1: Keep a reflection or gratitude journal. So much of our lives go by so fast that we don’t even have time to process it all. By slowing down and reflecting on our day, it gives us an opportunity to notice things that we would have otherwise missed. It’s also scientifically proven that the more you draw your attention to something, the easier it will be for you to notice it again in the future.

2: Adopt a practice of breath prayers. A breath prayer is a simple prayer in which, on your inhale, you say a word or a phrase, and on your exhale you say a word or a phrase. An example of this would be, “Abba, I am loved by you.” On your inhale, pray, “Abba” or you can use Father if you’d rather, but sometimes it’s helpful to have a separate word for our heavenly father. On your inhale, Pray, “Abba,” and on your exhale, pray, “I am loved by you.” Allow those words to wash over you and flow from your spirit as you sit in God’s presence. If you sit with that prayer every day for five minutes this week, I can promise that you won’t be unaffected by it.

One last example of how you can look for evidence of God’s love in your life is through an exercise that I developed with my son, Cedric, a little over a year ago.

I am not great at facilitating a loving experience for Cedric all of the time, but I do want him to understand at the very least that my love for him is not contingent on my emotions, his actions, or any circumstance. It is an unconditional love.

The first time I did this exercise with him, it was so powerful and so moving that I cried (surprise, surprise), but that’s a story for another time. Basically, here’s the exercise:

I say, “Even when I’m crabby, I still love you. Even when you’re whining, I still love you. Even when I tell you no, I still love you.” I repeat this over and over, sometimes using silly things like “even when you fart on me, I still love you.” When I can, I bring in specific examples from our day. He loves offering new examples and circumstances, and he’s even started telling me that even when I don’t listen to him, he still loves me.

I think we can do the same with God.

In the car, in bed before falling asleep, or while you’re doing any number of mundane tasks, tell God, “Even when I mess up, You still love me. Even when I am in pain, You still love me. Even when I don’t read my bible, You still love me. Even when I hurt others, you still love me. Even when I feel alone, You still love me.”

God’s love for us is unconditional – it never changes based on our circumstances or actions. It is abundant – it never reaches an end. And it is perfect – it’s not a shallow, manipulative, or toxic love. It is a powerful, selfless, healing love that we have complete access to through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ.

God has a deep, deep longing for us to not only intellectually know He loves us, but to believe it and experience it in every moment of our lives. He desires for us to remain in His love, to literally live in it and operate through it. It’s not enough to simply understand that, theoretically, God loves us. We must come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. When we do, it can radically change our relationship with God, ourselves, and others.