God’s Wild Love for You - Encouragement for Today - May 5, 2022
God’s Wild Love for You
LISA BEVERE
Lee en español
“Be here—the king is wild for you. Since he’s your lord, adore him.” Psalm 45:11 (MSG)
Before I knew Christ, I’d chosen a path of destruction that would have ground to dust every dream and hope I dared to harbor.
I still remember the tangible sense of relief I felt that night when I first heard that God actually loved me and wasn’t angry with me.
But the good news did not stop there. I learned that, on the cross, Jesus blotted out the record of each and every sin I’d ever committed. I felt immediately lighter. My breathing became deeper, and my jaw unclenched. The heavy shroud that sin and shame had layered upon my frame was stripped away, and a mantle of Christ’s righteousness took its place.
God is the only One capable of keeping an exacting record of our sins, and yet He refuses to. Rather than itemize our sins, He plunges any recollection of their taint and violations into oblivion, as Micah 7:19 says:
“He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (ESV).
I love the imagery captured in this verse. Out of compassion, God crushes the very things that threaten to crush us. Our evil actions and vices crumble under the weight of His step. And once those idols of sin and shame are ground into unrecognizable fragments, He hurls them into the sea, where they sink to its cold, shadowed depths, never to rise again.
This is an invitation to tremble in awe and wild wonder of the Most High God, who knows all and yet loves us so well. In fact, it’s time for us to challenge the way we think God thinks about us.
Perhaps you’ve entertained beliefs like I once had that God is angry and displeased with you. I encourage you to apply what the psalmist suggests in Psalm 45:11: “Be here—the king is wild for you … adore him.” Adoration results from revelation of His wild love for you!
The God who is Truth cannot lie. He is wild about you!
As daughters and sons of our Lord, we are under His rule, and His rule is love. One way we can honor His lordship is by choosing to accept how He feels about us. His love for us is not subject to how we feel about ourselves, no matter what we’ve done or how tempted we are to dwell on the past.
His love is selfless. He is love. His love is independent of how we look, feel or act. We might as well surrender to this love that is beyond our comprehension.
This revelation — that God, who is love, loves us — is exciting. If we are bored with the idea that God loves us, it could be because we’ve heard it but never experienced it. This realization that He constantly thinks of us is thrilling and should awaken a fresh enthusiasm in every aspect of our walk with the Father.
He means what He has said about us. His heart is set on us, and nothing we do or say can remove His seal of love from us. In Christ, His love is forever settled.
It is now time for us to settle it for ourselves.
Dear Father, You have promised to love me with a wild and fierce love. Show me how to fully believe that truth and to walk with You in excitement and with a fresh sense of expectation for how You’re working in my life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
OUR FAVORITE THINGS
God doesn’t just tolerate you; He loves you and wants you to know His wild thoughts toward you are full of love, joy, grace and mercy. Check out Fiercely Loved: God’s Wild Thoughts about You for 90 short readings by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Bevere to help you change the way you think God thinks about you.
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Enter to WIN your very own copy of Fiercely Loved: God’s Wild Thoughts about You by Lisa Bevere. To celebrate this book, Lisa’s publisher will give away 5 copies! Enter to win by leaving a comment here. {We’ll randomly select 5 winners and then notify each one in the comments section by Monday, May 9, 2022.}
FOR DEEPER STUDY
Psalm 139:17-18, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” (ESV)
What sin and shame has God set you free from? How will you rest in God’s wild love for you?
© 2022 by Lisa Bevere. All rights reserved.
Proverbs 31 Ministries
P.O. Box 3189
Matthews, NC 28106
www.Proverbs31.org
