Have you ever felt unloved? Maybe you thought that no one cared about you? Or perhaps you felt left out. None of those are fun feelings. They can all lead to bad conclusions. The beautiful thing is that none of them are true. 

There is someone who loves you, is always there for you, and cares for you more than you could imagine.

I was the shy kid growing up. I did not speak to people and found it challenging to carry on a conversation. It is hard to make friends when you are shy and quiet. On top of that, I was a tomboy and never got what other girls were into, dolls, make-up, clothing, or whatever was cool that season. I would rather play sports, climb a tree, or conquer a kingdom. 

When I was in group settings, I stood on the outside because I did not know how to talk to others, nor did I want to push myself into any group. These factors and others caused me to feel alone, on the outside, and like I did not belong and would never fit in. No one liked me or wanted to be around me.

Over the years, I have learned how untrue those feelings are. Now I know that people like me and want me around. I do not have to stay on the outside. But it also no longer matters because I know how much God loves me.

We do not talk about the love of God enough, probably because we do not think about it enough. The love of God should be our daily, hourly, and momently mediation.

1. God’s love is everlasting

“I have loved you with an everlasting love.” Jeremiah 31:3

Everlasting is challenging to comprehend around because we are finite. We have a beginning and an end. God’s love does not. He loved you before time existed, and He will love you after time ends.

I used a bead one time to illustrate this to a bunch of kids. With my finger following the outside of the bead, I asked the kids, “Will happen if I keep running my finger around this bead? Will it reach an end to stop at?” The children looked at me shyly, but a mother sitting in the back said, “Your finger will get tired.”

She is right. My finger would get very tired before it reached the end. God’s love goes on like that. It never ends. 

It also had no beginning. You did not do something to make God love you. He loves you, and He always has.

2. God’s love will never stop

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;” Lamentations 3:22

God’s love for you will never stop. You can not do something to make God stop loving you. No matter how bad you tried to be, God would still love you. His love never ceases.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?… For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ron 8:35, 38-39

Nothing and no one can ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not death, not angels, not the mightiest ruler, not anything that is coming, no any power, not even going to Mars or the depths of the ocean. 

Nothing in all creation has the power to separate you from God’s love. You are stuck with it. His love is stuck to you with a force stronger than glue or duct tape.

3. God’s love is undeserved

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

Why should God love us? We have rebelled against God. We have sinned. We have messed up. We are undeserving of God’s love. 

Humanity has spurned God, said He does not exist, disregarded His rules, and lived as though we are the kings and queens of this earth. Treat any human half as bad as most of us have treated God, and they would want nothing to do with you, let alone love you.

But God is not like us. God loves you regardless of what you do. God loved you when there was nothing good in you. God loved you when you were not seeking Him. 

You did nothing to deserve God’s love. There is no reason God should love you, but He does. 

God loves you. Period. 

Not “God loves you because you obey Him.” Not “God loves you because you believe in Jesus.” Not “God loves you because you give something to Him.” No, God loves you because He is God, and He says He does.

4. God’s love abounds

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” Exodus 34:6

God abounds with love, and his love abounds toward you. Isn’t that an incredible thought? I love to think of it. It’s like a fountain overflowing with water, continually flowing, constantly flowing, always more and more water. 

Always more and more love.

His love is not going to dry up. It is not going to become a small flow of love. No God’s love abounds. If love were water, God’s love would be like standing underneath Victoria Falls, getting deluged with water.

God is love. His love comes out of who He is, and as there is no limit to God, there is no limit to His love.

God loves you with limitless love and love that ever abounds to you, ever flows over onto you. Isn’t that cool?

This stuff gets me excited, like wanting to jump up and down excited! (Except I don’t usually do that, so I’m jumping up and down inside). I hope you are too.

5. God’s love is beyond our knowledge

“to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” - Ephesians 3:17

We can never fully comprehend God’s love. You could spend a lifetime trying to and would only scratch the surface of it. As the great hymn says, “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen could ever tell.” 

Perhaps reading through the other aspects of God’s love, you have gotten that feeling. I know I have reflected on them. I can’t understand how God’s love is everlasting, how He can love me when I am neglectful of Him or blatantly disobeying Him. But He does. 

I don’t understand God’s love! And I am grateful for that. I like having a God I cannot comprehend because it is comforting to know that God’s love is beyond my comprehension, as that means it is bigger than me. 

God has a whole lot of love for you, and you get a lifetime and then some to search out the depth, and width, and breadth, and height of that love. (And just a little secret, you never will get to the limits of it.) 

6. God delights in His love

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because He delights in steadfast love.” Micah 7:18

Oh, that’s a wonderful verse! And of all the amazingness in it, perhaps the last line is the best. “He delights in steadfast love.”

God delights in love!

Do you know what it means to delight in something? It is to take great pleasure in something. God takes great pleasure in love. Not in our love, but His love. 

When we delight in something, we want to spend time and energy doing that thing. We prize it. We value you. 

A man who delights in his truck will spend time cleaning it. He knows just when the oil needs to change and every little detail. My neighbor is like that. Every weekend he is out cleaning his truck, buffing it, or tuning something, and often during the week, he spends time working on it.

God delights in love. He spends time loving you. He takes great pleasure in loving you. God knows every detail about you because He delights in loving you.

Isn’t that amazing? You are loved, and God thinks it is the best thing to love you. He takes pleasure in loving you. He delights in it.

7. The cross showed God’s love

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:19-20

“Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Eph 5:2

Nowhere is God’s love for you more clearly visible than at the cross of Jesus.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jn 15:13

God sent his only Son into the world to lay down His life for us. He left heaven, the throne of God, and unspeakable glory. He came and entered the human world in a lowly position enduring all the temptations we do and suffering along the way.

But the greatest suffering lay at the cross. He was betrayed by one of his closest friends, deserted by others, and one of them even denied knowledge of Him. In a mock trial that must have irritated his truth-loving soul as He is truth, He was found guilty for a crime He never committed and sentenced to death. He never opened His mouth to defend Himself, although He could have. He did this because He loved you.

He was whipped until the blood flowed freely, mocked, and despised. He was nailed to a cross and hung to die an excruciatingly painful death with his pain and death were mocked. He could have come off the cross, but he did not because He loved you.

He took the weight of your sin, mine sin, and every other sin in the world upon Him and died in our stead because He loved us. He deserved none of what He got. We deserve HIs punishment, but He loves us, so He did it.

And even after all that suffering, now that He has risen, He still puts up with us and calls us to Him because He loves us. He never blames us for what He suffered even though because He loved us.

If that does not say, love, nothing ever will. God’s love for us is shown at the cross. 

R.A. Torrey relates a story about a little girl who went to her pastor and said she didn’t love Jesus. Her pastor told her to say “Jesus loves me” while going home from church and all that week. The following week she came bouncing up to her pastor, “I love Jesus,” she told him. “And I know He loves me.” She went on to say that she said, “Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me.” All the way home, she thought about all that Jesus had done for her and had to love Him.

We love Him because He first loved us. If you are not feeling the love of God, maybe you too need to say, “Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me.” Over and over again to yourself, until you know that Jesus loves you.

These seven meditations on God’s love are just a beginning. He loves us so, so, so much. My earnest desire is that you would know just how much He loves you and open your heart to His love. It is special, precious, and there is ever more of it.

Which of these meditates struck you the most? Which is most precious to you? Share in the comments below.