Have you ever wondered if you are truly loved by God? Perhaps you have wondered if He really cares about you. Maybe you have questioned if He really knows your every thought. It is natural for us to ask questions and have doubts.
How do we dispel our doubts? Being human, our doubts are most often dispelled through experience. Therefore, it is logical that our doubts about God loving us, caring for us, and knowing our thoughts are dispelled by our experience with God.
The apostle John, the one whom Jesus loved, tells us there is another way to know that God loves and cares for us, and He knows us inside out, including our thoughts. He tells us that God gave us His Spirit—the Holy Spirit.
John also says we are encouraged, enticed, nudged, and maybe even given a little push to obey God by the Holy Spirit. This is an encouragement for us. When we experience the nudging, we receive confirmation that God loves and cares for us and He has, in fact, put His Spirit in us.
When we experience the nudging, we have a choice. We can choose to obey or disobey. Our choice doesn’t diminish God’s love for us. However, it may very well change how God deals with us, much like how the parent deals with a disobedient child.
Regardless of our choice, we are assured that God is there—He is with us. As we continue to experience God in our lives, we become more confident God is always there. We learn to trust Him more with each experience. Does this sound familiar? As you observe children with their parents, don’t you see them trust their parents more as they have positive experiences with them? Sure, there is the one off or ten percent that don’t, but the vast majority of them do. Why should we expect anything different when experiencing God?
As we continue to live our lives, it is good for us to reflect on how God has worked in our lives. It is good for us to trust Him more and more as we experience His loving care for us. It is through reflection and acknowledgment of God’s love for us that we grow closer to Him. I encourage each of us to take time to reflect, acknowledge God, and give thanks for His Spirit being with us at all times.
I pray we all recognize our experiences with God. I pray we trust Him more each day. I pray each one of us realize God loves us at all times, even when we make mistakes. Experience God. Trust God. Know that God loves you. Realize His Spirit is in you. Eliminate your doubts.
1 John 3:24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
Marty Pressey 