Struck By Love

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!

  When I read this statement by the Apostle John, I imagine him jumping out of his seat with excitement.

  Man has always been the center piece of God’s creation, and we were made sinless. You would think that after the fall of Adam, God would place His affection elsewhere, but He didn't. Everything He did in history, He did for us. Even though we know that, we still lack the desire to do the right things and have good motivation. We tend to be selfish and unconcerned for anything outside of our sphere. It's understandable. Looking at our situation we might say, “Without me in the picture nothing else matters.” This is a true statement for the natural man. We are the center of our life. It’s hard to come to grips with how selfish we are because we tend to think and speak in euphemisms. We're trained to care for  others, even if we don’t all the time. We see images in media of children in faraway places that have needs, and to alleviate our guilt we may sign up to send monthly contributions. I don’t say it's all because of societal blame, but the message can seem to say, “You are self-indulgent and it’s your fault these kids are hungry.” We normally have no problem caring for our own families and friends. Why? Because they mean something to us personally. They are part of our self life. Again the arrow points back to the center of our concern, ourselves. It explains why God says, speaking through Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"

  We also can have a hard time loving ourselves. We don’t think we deserve love because we remember the bad parts of our past. We think, "It’s only going to get worse." 
 Learning to love ourselves the way God does not only helps us, but it affects our families, our friends, and changes how we see the our neighbors in the world around us.

  John is expressing the love of God in his statement. He realizes, through divine revelation, that he has been adopted into the family of God and now is part of God’s sphere of concern. He's family. He's been struck by God's arrow of love.

  God loves people. His love, in fact, is demonstrated to us in that, while we were still sinners, God sent Jesus, His Son, to cleanse us from our sin through the shedding of his blood. The love John is experiencing is the love of a father towards his son. It's a love that wants to see us succeed. It’s a love that plans good for us while still allowing us to fall and fail and question why things don’t always go the way we hope.

  You are a child of God if you have believed in Jesus Christ as your Savior. Think of yourself that way. Your position now is that you are a son, a daughter of the Most High. Like John, get excited. Jump out of your chair. Skip down the street and shout praise to your heavenly Father. Then, love yourself just as you are, because that’s how God loves you.

"See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!"

Scripture references

1 John 3:1

Jeremiah 17:9

Romans 5:8

1 John 3:1