The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction (5 page)

God Is Pleased When You Draw on His Love

Do you know that Jesus finds great joy when you draw on His love? Look at how the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus ended. When the disciples left Jesus at the well to buy food, He was weary and tired from the journey. When they came back, they were amazed to find Him refreshed, and they wondered if someone had brought Him something to eat. Jesus answered them by saying, “I have food to eat of which you do not know” (John 4:32).

What food was Jesus referring to here? He had not eaten or drunk anything. All He had done was minister to the woman from Samaria. In other words, Jesus found nourishment, strength, and joy when He ministered His love to her. You know, when you draw from men, they become depleted and weak. But the opposite is true of Jesus. When you draw from Him, He is strengthened, refreshed, and rejuvenated! Jesus wants us to know that He derives great joy and pleasure when we draw upon His love for us.

When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus why He (a Jew) would
ask her (a Samaritan) for a drink of water, this is what He said to her: “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water… Anyone who drinks this water [from the well] will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life” (John 4:10, 13–14
NLT
).

Jesus is saying the same thing to you today:
If you only knew
who it is who comes to you in your darkest and weakest moments.
If you only knew
this gift of God who will never leave you nor forsake you, who has gone before you and who comes to you in the midst of your storms.
If you only knew
the One who reaches out to you even when you have failed and who doesn’t hold your past mistakes or present failures against you.

Beloved, if you only knew this gift of God who offers the living water of His unconditional, endless love to you and you drink of that love, you will never thirst again. You won’t need to look for love or acceptance in all the wrong places and have your heart broken and fearful about the future and your life derailed. You can wake up with a fresh expectation of good every day. Jesus was essentially inviting the woman to ask Him for the living water of His love. Will you do that today? Your life will never be the same again when you personally experience His love!

I
heard a story of a minister from Oregon who was assigned to provide counseling in a state mental institution. His first assignment was to a padded cell that housed deranged, barely clothed patients. The stench of human excrement filled the room. He couldn’t even talk to the inmates, let alone counsel them—the only responses he got were groans, moans, and demonic laughter.

Then the Holy Spirit prompted him to sit in the middle of the room and for a full hour sing the famous children’s hymn that goes, “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; they are weak, but He is strong.” Nothing happened at the end of that first day, but he persisted. For weeks he would sit and sing the same melody with greater conviction each time: “Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.”

As the days passed, the patients began singing with him one by one. Amazingly, by the end of the first month, thirty-six of the severely ill patients were transferred from the high-dependency
ward to a self-care ward. Within a year, all but two were discharged from the mental institution.
¹

These simple words, “Jesus loves me! This I know,” were first penned as a poem by Anna Bartlett Warner, an American writer born in 1827 in Long Island, New York. In 1862, the prolific hymn composer William Batchelder Bradbury set the words to the tune that we are familiar with today and added the chorus, “Yes, Jesus loves me!” The popularity of the hymn spread rapidly across America and to every continent in the world. It has been translated into many languages and quickly became one of the best-known and loved hymns of all time.

The hymn’s ongoing popularity lies in its succinct elegance in unveiling Jesus’ heart. It beckons one to recognize that no matter what challenges, failures, and misdeeds one might be dealing with,
the love of Jesus remains a constant
.

“Jesus loves me! This I know.”

How so?

“For the Bible tells me so.”

So simple, yet so powerful.

Whether we feel it or not, Jesus’ constant love for us rests in the truth and on the foundation of His unchanging Word. It proclaims that His love for you and me is based utterly and completely on Him. On His promises, His work, and His grace.

God’s Love for You Is Unconditional

Do you believe that God loves you today? No matter how many mistakes you’ve made in your life, I’m here to tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that God loves you. He loves you with an everlasting love. Right now, regardless of the challenges you may be going through, I want to encourage you to see yourself walking under an open heaven, surrounded by His unmerited favor. Expect good things in your future. Believe in His love for you. Believe with all your heart that you are the apple of His eye and the delight of His heart. Believe that you are highly favored, greatly blessed, and deeply loved!

God’s love for you is unconditional. It’s a love that is so pure, pristine, and marvelous. It has nothing to do with your performance, but everything to do with who you are in God’s eyes—His beloved. The emphasis of the old covenant of the law was all about your love for God, whereas the emphasis of the new covenant of grace is all about God’s love for you. The sum total of the law under the old covenant is, “You shall love the L
ORD
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5, see also Matt. 22:37, 40).

Let’s be honest here. Have you ever met anyone who can love God this way? Of course not. Even David, whom the Bible describes as a man after God’s own heart, didn’t love God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and all his strength. It’s a human impossibility. The law was designed to show us that we are incapable of loving God perfectly.

Knowing that man wouldn’t be able to fulfill His commandment to love Him with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and all his strength, do you know what God did? He demonstrated how only
He
could love us with all His heart, all His soul, all His mind, and all His strength when He sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from all our sins with His own blood. That is why the new covenant is all about God’s love for you and not your love for Him! Under grace, God doesn’t want you to focus your thoughts on, “Do I really love God?” That’s not the focus of the new covenant. Under grace, God wants you to focus on
His
love for you. Therefore, the questions you should be asking yourself are:

“Do I know how much God loves me today?”

“Do I really believe that God loves me right now?”

You need to remind yourself of God’s love especially when you have just failed. Do you believe that He loves you when you have just made a mistake? This is where the rubber meets the road. After you have failed, that is when what you really believe about God’s love for you is tested. Do you really believe that His love for you is truly and indeed unconditional? Or has the unconditional love of God become merely a platitude that is no longer something real to you? I see this happen all the time. I hear people say, “God’s love is unconditional!” But the moment they fail, all of a sudden the love they once said was unconditional becomes contingent upon their behavior.

Many believe that God loves them when they do right, but stops loving them the moment they do something wrong. I’m going to shatter that wrong belief into smithereens with the truth of God’s Word!

While our love for God can fluctuate, His love for us always remains constant. His love for us is based on who He is and not based on what we do. I love just how confident and emphatic the apostle Paul is when he says, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). In the New International Version, it says, “For I am convinced…”

Are you
persuaded
and
convinced
the way the apostle Paul is that as a child of God, nothing, not even your sins, failings, and mistakes, can ever separate you from the love of God? Don’t go by what you feel, think, or have been taught. God’s Word proclaims in no uncertain terms that nothing can separate you from His love. Nothing means
nothing
! His love for you is not contingent on your immaculate performance. He loves you even in your failings. That’s why it is called grace! It is the undeserved, unmerited, and unearned favor of God. If you can deserve God’s grace, then it is no longer grace.

Power to Overcome Every Failing

The truth is, if you are able to receive His love afresh whenever you fail, you will have the power to overcome that failing in your life. Let’s imagine a situation in which you have just lost your temper at your wife over a family situation. In your frustration and anger, perhaps you said some hurtful things that you know you shouldn’t have, and a heated exchange of harsh and unkind words results. A cold war breaks out in the house, and your kids run for cover. Now you are feeling terribly guilty for what you started, and your conscience condemns you:

How can you speak that way to your wife?

What kind of a believer are you?

What a terrible example you are setting for your children!

The more you dwell in guilt, the worse it gets and the more angry you become with your wife—it’s all
her
fault that you feel so lousy and guilty now. Because of
her
, you believe that you are now cut off from God’s love. You think—completely wrongly—that He is mad at you because you were mad at your wife. Why? Because while you may
know
about His unconditional love in your mind, you don’t really
believe
in your heart that His love for you is truly unconditional.

My friend, if you could only see the truth that even in your anger, God still loves you perfectly. If you could see that the blood of His Son has already washed away that sin in your life. If you
could grasp the fact that even in all your ugliness, He still sees you righteous in His sight and calls you His beloved. The truth is, if you truly knew how freely you have been forgiven and how unconditionally you are loved, it would be very hard for you to remain angry with your wife and keep up your end of the cold war. In fact, the opposite will happen.

As you feed on the Lord’s beautiful love and lavish forgiveness even while you feel most undeserving, you’ll end up doing whatever it takes to reconcile with your wife. Not only that, but whatever upset you to begin with also becomes infinitesimally small when you allow your heart to be embraced by the largeness of His love. It’s no wonder the Word of God says, “Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her
” (Eph. 5:25, emphasis mine). You have no power to love your wife unless you have first experienced the unconditional love of Christ in your own life!

In the same way, the Bible exhorts wives to “submit to your own husbands,
as to the Lord
” (Eph. 5:22, emphasis mine). Don’t you just love how practical the Bible is? We can so easily get upset over the smallest of things that arise in the minutiae of everyday domestic living. And it’s only as we believe and submit to God’s love that we let His love dissolve our fruitless frustrations over battles that are actually not worth fighting and find the strength to love, submit, and live in peace with our spouses.

Can you see? Our hang-ups are like a drop of water in the vast, blue ocean or a tiny speck of sand in an immense desert when contrasted with the love of God. His love consumes all your anger, frustrations, disappointments, and pain. His forgiveness envelops
all your sins, failures, and mistakes. His grace gives you victory and power to overcome every sin, bondage, and addiction. That is why having a right belief about God’s unconditional love for you is so vital to your relationship with Him.