How To Experience God's Love
Hello Friend! Today I’m celebrating the release of my song “You Love Me” into the world…meaning, it’s able to be listened to / streamed / purchased all over the world through all the online music places like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. It has also been sent out to about 1,500 radio outlets around the world for them to consider playing—with most of the interest appearing to come from a handful of stations in Europe, Africa, and Australia, so far! Interesting!!
This song is an uber-fun celebration of God’s amazing love. Here’s a clip…
Hear the entire song on Spotify here…
I can hear somebody saying, “I’m so glad you think God loves you, Mark…but that has not been my experience.”
Do You Believe God Actually Loves You?
We have all had diverse experiences leading us to this particular point in our beliefs, hearing different voices telling us what God does or doesn’t think about us. Most of us have been shaped by what parents or authority figures thought about us, and assumed that must be how God thinks, too.
To complicate matters even more, some denominations of Christianity even say that you are worthless, nothing but a worm, and that God wants nothing to do with you. They say that simply because you’re a human, God can’t even come close to you. I despise this so much. This is not the Good News of the Gospel which says God is constantly with us…Emmanuel! God came down to earth to know us, to be with us, to let us know up close and personal this great pursuing love that surrounds us, and is even inside of us!
I’ve struggled to believe this Good News for most of my life, believing I was worthless like I had been told in church. While the intention (I believe) was to make God bigger and somehow better than we could imagine (“I must decrease, so God can increase”), it also increased fears of what will happen to us without God, and eliminated any chance for healthy self-esteem. This logic completely ignores the beautiful creations of God that each of us are. We are, in fact, created in God’s image—for the Bible tells me so.
God delights in you. Soak in that for a minute.
In “You Love Me” I wrote,
You took my heart, wrote your name upon it, And now I’ll never doubt that you love me!
I believe God’s love is a free gift that is extended to everybody. It’s a gift of love that was imprinted on your soul before you were even born. There’s literally nothing you can do to earn it. No magic words to say to qualify for it. All you have to do is accept it. Accept that you are loved by your Creator. Accept that God looks at you and is so pleased. Accept that there’s nothing you can do to ever to be apart from God’s love. Wowza.
I also believe that God’s love permeates everyone and everything. I base that on the writing in the book of Genesis that states God made everything…literally spoke everything and everyone into existence. And God called it all good! Love is the source, and the material with which all is made. Love is the breath, the life, in us and all of creation.
Isn’t that amazing?
Also from “You Love Me”,
Wasted another day just thinking about me. Time to put down the mirror and start looking around me. Suddenly the lights turn on and there’s so much to see; I’m surrounded by all the proof of how you feel about me!
If you want to experience God’s love, take a breath. What a gift! Look around. Wow! Notice the details of your fingerprint, unlike anyone else on the whole planet. Amazing! Look at photographs of outer space that are coming in. Unbelievable! This life, this creation, is phenomenal. And we get to experience it, enjoy it, share it, celebrate it.
Here are a few other ways that I experience God’s love.
Through the gift of peace
Blessings of provision
Love & kindness from family & others
Surprise moments of joy
By the transformation of my mind/heart (probably the biggest)
I believe the best way to know what God thinks about you is through the person of Jesus, the God-man, sent to proclaim God’s love and desire to be in relationship with each of us. Jesus was a radical, revolutionary teacher who wanted to convince people that there was an upside-down way to live that would lead to greater joy, peace, love, and happiness. Understanding all that Jesus taught will take more than a lifetime.
But you can trust that God’s love became real in Jesus, so you and I can know that God’s love has become real in us, as well. When we live from that perspective of being God’s love-bearers to the world, life becomes more amazing than you could ever dream.
God has done and continues to do amazing things in this world. The more I look for the good in circumstances and in people, the more good I see. And the more I see, the more convinced I am of God’s love for all of us.
So I’m curious…how do YOU experience God’s love?
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