When God thinks about you, what do you think he thinks about you? Your answer to this question will have a huge impact on the way you perceive and think about God. From the moment we gained understanding we were taught that our behavior matters, and it does. Our behavior for good or bad impacts just about every area of our lives, it impacts the way others perceive us and it impacts the way we perceive ourselves. Our behavior impacts all of our relationships and all of our endeavors. So, the natural tendency is to think, if my behavior matters to everyone around me it must also matter to God. However, the mistake is to think that when God thinks about us the main lens through which he sees us is our behavior since that is the lens through which we judge each other.
BIBLE READING:
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. – 1 John 4:7-8 NIV
The bottom line is that the lens through which God sees you and me is not our behavior, as important as that may be. When God thinks about you and me no matter how good or bad we may have behaved he loves us. A love demonstrated when he sent his son into the world when we were living far from him and when our behavior was anything but good. There’s nothing you can do that will cause him to love you any more, he already gave his very best. But there’s also nothing you can do that will cause him to love you less. His love for us is unconditional.
If this unconventional concept of unconditional love could ever move from our heads into our hearts it would have a major impact on every single one of our relationships. Hence it would radically impact our behavior. We would be more willing to serve, and we’d be more willing to give. We would be quicker to apologize and quicker to forgive. We would think differently about everyone around us, we would realize that God also loves every single person we will ever come in contact with as much as he loves us, whether our behavior merits his love or not.
THINK ABOUT IT:
God loves you and he can’t love you any more. God loves the world, he could not possibly love the world any more, and no matter what we do he will never love us any less. So, what God thinks when he thinks about you and me, is that he unconditionally loves us.
PRAY:
Dear Heavenly Father, your love amazes me. Thank you for loving me despite my shortcomings, thank you for having good thoughts about me, and above all else, thank you for loving me so much that you sent your only son to die in my place so that I can have eternal life with you. I pray that your love, your great and amazing love would take root in my heart not just my intellect. Help me to not just understand your word, but to feel your love deep within. And I pray that by fully grasping your love, I could learn to love more, serve more, forgive more, and give more. You have done the maximum you could possibly do for me in your love, you sent Jesus, thank you for loving me that much. Amen