Jesus Christ Deeply Loves You

But what does it mean that He deeply loves you? It means He both desires what is best for you and supplies what is best for you.

A parent who loves their child not only warns them not to play in the busy street but also puts up boundaries of protection in order to make playing in the street difficult to achieve. Plus, that parent will provide plenty of other safe places for their child to play. Yet, they are fully aware that their ability to protect their child only reaches so far.

In the beginning, God created a space for humanity to thrive. Within this space, He not only created plenty of options and opportunities for growth and enjoyment, but He also provided boundaries of protection from harm. Yet, due to His love, He also provided humanity with the opportunity to love Him back. And this opportunity came at a high price. Due to love, He knew His ability to protect humanity from harm only reached so far. We all know that God knew humanity would eventually “play in the busy street.” Now, many have said that the cross of Christ reversed all this, and now all is well. They say that due to God’s unconditional love displayed on the cross, His children no longer have access to or the ability to choose to “play in the busy street.” By “playing in the street” I mean choosing that which harms them. This belief stems from the idea that they have no “will” to choose anymore. This is untrue. How do I know? I know because I can love. Love requires a relationship, or someone to love. Relationships are built around trust. All three of these: love, relationships, and trust automatically require freedom of choice.

Jesus Christ has chosen to love you and He has given you the freedom to choose to love Him back. Jesus Christ gave you space to thrive along with plenty of options and opportunities for growth and enjoyment. Jesus Christ gave you boundaries through His Word along with the power of His Spirit not only so that you could remain within those boundaries but so you could also fully enjoy the blessings of all the choices and freedom that came attached to those boundaries. Yet, due to His love, He knew He could not force you to remain within those boundaries.

With this understanding, we can see how we can be both, beloved children of God while at the same time, not living according to that identity.

Today, both in America and Canada, we are looking at the result of 60 years of forgotten identity. Both America and Canada have deep roots of Christian history. Both America and Canada were built on Christian families with Christian values. So where did we go wrong?

When God delivered His people Israel out of Egypt -the exodus, He took them from a place of slavery to a place of freedom. He delivered them into a land of hope and promise. He gave them the “Promised Land.” But right before they entered that land of hope and promise He warned them of what would occur if they failed to be THANKFUL, failed to remember WHERE THEY HAD COME FROM, and failed to remember that GOD WAS THEIR PROVIDER. He told them that if they forgot any of these 3 things, that which He intended to be a blessing would turn into a curse.

Over the last 60 years, Christian values have gone from families being built on the foundations of faith-“God is our provider” and thankfulness, which results from- “remembering where they had come from” and become instead values built on humanism-“I am my provider” and ingratitude-“I owe no one anything.” I want you to notice I did not say American and Canadian unbelievers exchanged these values. I am saying true, born-again Christians have. You might say, how can this be possible, after all, they have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God! Over a 60-year period, Christians unintentionally took secular ideas of psychology, humanism, and feminism from modern sciences and higher education, from universities and the workplace, and mixed them with Christian values. This exchange changed how people viewed the Bible and God’s authority. And anything that comes into the family eventually enters into the Church. Eventually, a type of Christianity derived from psychology, science, higher education, feminism, and humanism was exchanged for Christianity which was built solidly on the authority of the Word of God. The results are a VERY watered-down Christianity and a society that no longer recognizes TRUTH or anything resembling a moral standard. And as mentioned at the beginning, though God deeply loves His own children He knows that love requires the freedom to choose.

Thankfully, there is a remnant. There is still a remnant who seek the God of truth. The believers mentioned above have unintentionally exchanged the God of TRUTH for the god of love, void of truth. And when you remove truth from love you end up with a “false love.”

Are you of the remnant that still holds to the God of truth? Below, I would like to offer a method of measurement.

Whether it was the prophets who loved the God of truth in the Old Testament or the disciples who loved the God of truth in the New Testament and since that time, they all held deep convictions that they were unwilling to move from. They all held that intimate, quality prayer was as necessary for their spiritual life as food and water were for their physical life. And they all held that God was telling the truth when He wrote the Bible.

They believed God’s Word was both their map and their compass: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path … You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word” (Ps 119:105 and 114).

They believed this promise: “…you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer 29:12-13). They knew the key words there were “all your heart.”

God was their “goal.” When they prayed, their motivation was not so much for a prayer to be answered as it was to encounter the presence of the LORD: “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4).

They held these promises close to their heart: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart … Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act … Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;” (Ps 37:4, 5, and 7).

They lived neither for wealth nor achievement in this life. Their gaze was fixed on the eternal and not the temporal. God was their portion each day: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt 6:11). Therefore, they really believed this promise and practiced it: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ … But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31 and 33).

You see, many of us in our day have exchanged the pursuit of the presence of the Lord for the pursuit of temporal pleasure and success. These come attached with anxious hurry, busy distraction, and a loss of eternal purpose. When we lose sight of our “identity in Christ” -meaning who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re headed, we trade the blessings that come attached to being called “children beloved of God” with the curses that come attached to forsaking our First Love. Therefore if you recognize that your life looks “anxious, distracted, hurried, and busy” it might be time to stop and look up. It might be time to slow down, exchanging all those distractions for the presence of the Lord. If we will believe this promise, that He “rewards those who diligently seek Him” (Heb 11:6b) we will once again enjoy the benefits that come attached to our identity in Christ.

So remember: Jesus Christ deeply loves you. And what does it mean that He deeply loves you? It means He both desires what is best for you and supplies what is best for you.