Valentine’s Day is marked by red hearts, sweet gestures and outward showings of affection and appreciation. It’s a time when love truly is in the air. But all around, there are people who don’t believe they can be loved or have the wrong view of what love is. Maybe that’s you or someone you know. You feel you’re unimportant, unworthy, unlovable. In this ‘My Answer,’ Billy Graham gives an explanation of God’s love for us that could change your view of it all:
Q: I have a hard time believing God loves me. I know you’ll say He does, and sometimes I believe it, but most of the time I don’t (although I wish I did). If you knew all the bad things I’ve done, you’d understand why I can’t believe God loves me.
A: If God treated us the way we treat other people, then you’d probably be right. If someone insults us or hurts us, we usually don’t want anything more to do with them. We may even want to strike back at them and hurt them in return.
But God isn’t like this! Even when we ignore Him or insult Him by the way we live, He still reaches out to us and wants us to come back to Him. He doesn’t love our sin—but He still loves us, and He still yearns for us to love Him in return. The Bible says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).
How do we know God loves us? Listen: If He didn’t love us, He never would have sent His only Son into the world to die for us. But Jesus Christ did come into the world, and He did die on the cross for our sins. Why did He do this? The only possible explanation is because God loves us. The Bible says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
Don’t trust your emotions; they can deceive you. Instead, trust Christ and what He has done for you. Invite Him to come into your life today, and then thank Him every morning for His unchanging love for you.
Repost: BillyGraham.org
