The root cause of all our spiritual problems lies in our not
knowing God as a Loving Father and a Sovereign God. One
truth that has revolutionized my Christian life is the
glorious revelation that Jesus gave us that the Father loves
us just as He loved Him. Jesus prayed to the Father,
".....that the world may know that Thou didst love them,
EVEN AS THOU DIDST LOVE ME."(Jn.17:23) Jesus prayed here
that the world around us might know this truth. But it has
to grip our hearts first, before the world can realise it.
All Christians believe theoretically in a loving Father in
heaven. But the fact that they are often worried and anxious
and so full of insecurity and fear, proves that they don't
believe it deep down in their hearts. There are fewer still
who would dare to believe that God loves them AS MUCH AS HE
LOVES JESUS! None of us could dare to believe such a truth
if Jesus had not plainly told us that it was so. Once your
eyes are opened to this glorious truth, it will change your
whole outlook on life. All murmuring and depression and
gloom will vanish from your life altogether. I know this can
happen, for it happened in my life.
This is now the unshakeable foundation of my life: GOD LOVES
ME JUST AS HE LOVES JESUS. It's not because you don't fast
and pray sufficiently that you are not entering into the
victorious life. Victory comes, not through self-effort but
through faith. "Faith in what?", you may ask. Faith in God's
perfect love for you. Many believers live under the
condemnation of Satan who keeps telling them, "You are not
fasting enough. You are not praying enough. You are not
witnessing enough. You are not studying the Bible enough",
etc., etc., They are constantly being whipped up by such
thoughts into an endless round of activity and into a
multitude of dead works. Do you realise that all your self-
discipline, fasting, praying, tithing and witnessing are
dead works, if they do not originate in love for God? And
they cannot originate in love unless you are secure in God's
love first. Paul's prayer for the Christians at Ephesus was
that they might be rooted and grounded in the love of God.
(Eph. 3:16,17).
The world is full of people who are looking for someone to
love them. Many Christians go from church to church, wanting
to be loved. Some seek for love in friendships and some in
marriage. But all this search can end in disappointment.
Like orphans, the children of Adam are insecure and as a
result are again and again overcome by bouts of self-pity.
The sad thing is that even after conversion, many still
remain insecure, when there is no need for them to be so.
What is the answer of the gospel to this problem? The answer
is to find our security in the love of God. Jesus repeatedly
told His disciples that the hairs on their head were all
numbered and that a God Who fed the millions of birds and
clothed the millions of flowers would certainly take care of
them. A greater argument than all of that, is: "He who did
not spare His own Son but gave Him up freely for us, how
shall He not with Him also freely give us ALL THINGS " (Rom.
8:32). As God cared for Jesus, He will care for you too.
One reason why God allows us at times to be disappointed
with our fellow human beings is so that we might learn to
stop leaning on man. He desires to free us from such
idolatry (for it is a form of idolatry to depend on man), so
that we might learn to lean wholly upon Him alone. And so
when God orders your circumstances in such a way that you
are disappointed on every side, that shouldn't discourage
you. It is just God weaning you away from the arm of flesh
so that you might learn to live by faith in Him. Learn to
find your security in the fact that God loves you as He
loved Jesus. All competition and jealousy among Christians
arises out of this same insecurity. A man who is secure in
the love of God and who believes that God made no mistake in
making him the way He made him, and in giving him the gifts
and talents He gave him, can never possibly be jealous of
another or compete with another. All problems of
relationships among believers are also basically due to this
same insecurity. Just think how many of your problems will
be solved when your eyes are opened to this one truth - that
God loves you exactly as He loves Jesus.
