December 5, 2010

God Loves You Means You Are God’s Favorite!

God Loves You Means You Are God’s Favorite!
God’s smile is upon you. You light up his face as much as anyone has ever lit up a lover’s face.
Most of us imagine that in God’s eyes we are just one of millions. We know most people don’t think we are important and so we assume God thinks of us in a similar way. But then, again, God is not like ‘most people.’ We feel that God has favorites and we think we’re a fair way down the list, but we are about to see this is one way where feelings do not correspond to reality. To God, you are special.

Four reasons why God favors no one over you

1. God’s Son shed his last drop of blood for you. God loves you with his whole heart. He loves you with every speck of his enormous love. That means no matter how much he loves others, he couldn’t possibly love anyone else more than he loves you.

A woman wrote about the above paragraph:
I had wanted to say, “God loves me with his whole heart? Come off it! It’s a wonder he loves me at all! Grantley, you exaggerate too much!” But the Lord silenced me with John 17:23:

I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Emphasis mine.)
When praying for all his followers, including those who would believe later (verse 20) Jesus declared that God loves them (me!) just as passionately as God the Father loves his perfect, eternal Son!

I can’t get round it; I can’t burrow under it or climb over it. So the only thing I can do is go through it, absorbing it as I go. God has put it in black and white and sealed it the the blood of his only Son that: Christ is in me – and God loves me as much as he loves Christ. And no way can God’s love for Christ be half-hearted. I drifted to sleep last night snuggling into that verse.
Scripture makes no promise that you will always feel loved, nor that circumstances will always make it obvious that you are loved. God simply promises that you are loved. No suffering or tragedy will ever separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:35-39). A snap-shot in time proves nothing. Only eternity’s movies can adequately portray the infinitude of God’s love for you.

The more you love someone the more important that person is to you. So the fact that God loves you with his whole heart means you are more important to God than you could ever imagine.

2. Before God forgave us we were all spiritually dead. Scripture affirms that every person on this planet was dead in their sin. You can’t get any deader than dead. God couldn’t say, I prefer her because she’s a little less dead than him.

But through Christ we can be forgiven. When God looks at a forgiven person, he can’t find one sin. When you are forgiven, God can’t find a person on the entire planet, more forgiven than you.

So without Christ we were all equally dead in our sin and in Christ we are all equally forgiven.

3. God is all-powerful. That means he doesn’t need some people more than others.

If God could only use young people, or strong people, or rich people, or famous people, or educated people, then God must be so weak that he needs human strength; so poor that he needs us to give him a few dollars; so foolish that he needs human education.

4. The Lord loves using small and seemingly unimportant things. 1 Corinthians 1:26 says, ‘Look at what you were before God called you. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you had great influence. Not many of you came from important families. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose what this world thinks is unimportant and what this world looks down on and thinks is nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world thinks is important. God did this,’ the Bible continues, ‘so that no one could boast in his presence.’

In the Bible, the book of Jonah seems small and insignificant. It’s only 2-3 pages long. I often feel like that: small and insignificant. I have often felt so useless that I would have committed suicide if I wasn’t worried about having to face God afterwards. But the Bible would be very much poorer without this tiny book. And the Kingdom of God would be much poorer without you. In this tiny book we see God using a storm, a whale, a heartless, rebellious, moody man, a plant, and a grub. Are you less gifted than a grub? Then God can do mighty things through you. If God could use a storm and a plant and a grub, God is smart enough to use you. God is so powerful he can use anything to do his work.

No Christian is too old, too poor, too uneducated, too stupid, too sick to be gloriously used of God. We can’t explore this in depth here. For just one aspect of this, see Never too old for God.

Do you believe there is nothing God cannot do? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life through your prayers? Those words ‘through your prayers’ don’t suddenly make God weak. Do you believe God can save thousands of souls? Then you must also believe God can save thousands of souls through you.

Either God can do the impossible through you, or he isn’t God.

Keep telling yourself, ‘There is nothing God cannot do through me.’

Heaven stands on tip toe waiting to see the astounding things you will achieve for the glory of God.

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