Hebrews 6: 19
While manning a booth at two recent church conferences, people would ask me to quickly summarize my book, "Live Like You're Loved." My first response was to say, "We know that God loves everybody, but we wonder, does God love ME? He knows all my dirt. How can He love and forgive me?"
When I say this, nearly everyone gets this look of pained agreement on their face and nods their head. Even great servants of Christ can wonder how God can love and forgive them.
But this uncertainty is not anchored in scripture. The Bible clearly tells us that God indeed does love us dearly and forgive us when we repent. We can be anchored in this hope of salvation, as described in Hebrews 6: 19:
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
Firm and secure, meaning this uncertainty is needless. God loves us so much that He sent His only son, Jesus, to teach us how to live and to serve as a sacrificial lamb for our sins. While God spared Isaac when Abraham dutifully followed God's command to sacrifice his son, God did not spare His own son. In doing so, He created a path to forgiveness and reconciliation, and as the Psalms tell us, He removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.
But this is a practical faith blog. So the question is, what's next? What do we do with God's love and forgiveness?
The short version of my book's answer is, we must respond by living like we're loved and living like we're forgiven. That means letting God's love flow through us to others. That means forgiving others with the forgiveness we have received.
We get some insight into God's thinking. Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Well, that's not much love if we don't love ourselves! But if we accept God's love and anchor ourselves in it, then it can spill out of us to others, and we can fulfill God's plan for His kingdom. And that goes for all of us. Whatever you may think of yourself, your picture is on God's refrigerator.
A female pastor listened to me sharing the story of "Live Like You're Loved," then exclaimed, "This material is for EVERYbody!" Exactly. Because God's love is for EVERYbody.
"Live Like You're Loved" is a book. It's a video series. It's a study guide. And it's available on CecilTaylorMinistries.com and on Amazon and other online booksellers.