God’s Heart for You Is Always Love
“Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.”
Psalm 118:1 BSB
One of the toughest battles in the Christian walk is separating our circumstances from the character of God.
How many times when a situation goes well do we say, “God is good!” in contrast to the situations that don’t go as well? We tend to connect positive and desirable circumstances with God’s character of goodness, yet this association runs into a dilemma when the circumstances we face are less favorable. According to this logic, if good circumstance = good God, then bad circumstance = bad, unloving God.
Although I know that is not true, the residual temptation to think this way still exists in my mind. I often get tempted to believe that God is upset with me or cold-hearted when I face a trial or pain outside of my control.
But in this continual process of renewing my mind, the phrase that God has wanted me to focus on recently is “My heart for you is always love.”
What does this mean?
It means that no matter what we go through or what circumstances come our way, His plan and motivation for allowing anything and everything to happen to us is love.
It sounds hard to believe when there are so many horrific things that happen to His children all over the world. It’s hard to say to someone who has been imprisoned for their faith or facing a chronic illness or grieving the loss of a child that God’s motivation for them is love.
Yet, our vantage point of God’s love for us is so far below His, that we truly can’t comprehend it. It would be like a math teacher trying to explain calculus to a kindergartener— it’s just not possible. In the same way, we can only trust that God’s heart for us is always love and is always good. Our circumstances don’t dictate that; His unchanging character does. We also must remember that He is working with a broken world and broken people, yet how marvelous it is that His plans prevail! And oftentimes that path He wants us to take to healing and transformation is the darker, scarier path— the valley of the shadow of death. Yet, He is with us all the way through and His motivation for leading us that direction is, once again, always love.
Below is a picture of different perspectives of the same sculpture. With anamorphic art, the image is only visible from one perspective. The top and bottom left images look random, but the bottom right image is what the many dots create. In a similar way, our vantage point of God’s love working throughout our lives looks more like first three images; we have no idea that God is perfectly assembling an intricate masterpiece.
Our job is not to try to figure out His work right now, but rather to trust His masterful hand, His calculated sequence, and that His ways are higher than ours.
Take a Moment:
Do you trust His heart is always loving toward you?
Here are some phrases to speak over yourself when you start to doubt His heart:
I am the apple of God’s eye.
He loves me unconditionally.
He adores me.
He smiles down on me.
He wants what’s best for me.
He will never leave me nor forsake me.
He works everything out for good.
He is in control.
Trusting that God’s heart for you is always love, whether your circumstances are good or bad, is what it means to live by faith.
-Alina