(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
God’s love is deeply personal.
God’s love is not a concept. It’s not something that is true in a general way for everybody. God’s love is specific and it is specific toward you and me individually.
It’s the foundation — it’s bedrock. It’s the first and the last thing each of us need to know, because it puts everything else in perspective. Get this and you get everything else. God loves each one of us individually, personally, by name, as if we were the only person on the earth. Do I believe that? Do I know that in the core of my being?
There are no requirements with this love — no conditions — you can’t earn it or destroy it. It is love for no reason — at least no reason in you or in me. There is nothing in us that requires love or that might cause it to be applied to us or not to be. If God has reasons for His love, none of them originate with you or me. Love originates with God himself and He loves us each, by name, with abandon because that’s who He is. God rejoices over you. You bring Him pleasure simply by being you because He created you for that purpose. Do you believe this in the core of your being?
His love cannot be diluted. You can refuse it, but you can’t stop it.
Now if it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, I don’t. I may be coming to understand this — in other words, I may know it in my head — but not necessarily in my heart. I know it, but do I believe it? Do I know this in the core of my being?
You see, it stands that if I truly believe God loves me, I will love myself, and if I love myself, I will love others. It all starts with believing and receiving God’s love.
Someone laid hands on me yesterday, prayed over me, and I literally felt God’s love poured out. When you are hard on yourself all the time, it’s overwhelming when God’s simple pleasure in you is felt in your soul. He loves. It all starts and ends with that.
Early this morning, our dear friend Roberta Stephens went to be with her Lord. She spent a life of service on the mission field and in the last few years she served us faithfully here at the Catch taking part in many of our programs. She will be sorely missed, but Jesus has her in person. Please pray for her sister Pat, her husband Dave, and the rest of their family as they mourn her passing while also rejoicing in her heavenly arrival.
John Fischer The Catch 
John, I agree with you about the joy of God’s love. I had a similar experience of God’s love totally enveloping me. The joy of that love has not left me to this day.
Within days of God pouring out His love on me two thoughts were presented to me. One was Jesus parable about the man who had all his debt forgiven by the King but could not find it within himself to forgive a minor debt.
The other thought is a quote by Beth Moore that convicted me. From Ephesians 5:1,2 she says, ” we are to literally live love. Fuzzy thought isn’t it. The very nature of love is sacrificial. In fact, if we are not presently feeling the squeeze and sacrifice of loving, we’re probably exercising a preferential, highly selective self centered human substitute.
Not only have we been called to live sacrificial love, at times we may also expend untold self sacrificing efforts for years and even for the rest of our lives without seeing any apparent fruit.
God has called us to love when-
1. We don’t want to.
2. We don’t feel like it.
3. We get nothing obvious in return.
4. They don’t deserve it.
5. They’re not worth it.
6. They don’t even know it.
7. It makes not difference to them.
Unless you’re not getting out enough, I am sure God is confronting you with the challenge to love someone right now who brings out most of those feelings in you. Mind you loving sacrificially does not equal subjecting ourselves to untold abuses. God doesn’t call us to sacrifice sanity. He calls us to sacrifice our selfishness.”
You state how God loves us, we love ourselves and then we love others. I think that last one to be the most difficult of all. It has also been said that if love was a spiritual gift rather than a choice a lot of us would say that we did not have that gift.
You might see this as me raining on your parade. That was not my intent. The parable of the man who was forgiven what could not be repaid, walked out of the palace and could not forgive his fellow man.
Excellent comments, Peter. Without God it’s impossible to love the way he asks us to. That’s why we need him.
This was great, Peter. And I love the list. Very helpful.
I cannot imagine our lives without the Love of God and at times we are hard on ourselves but, he loves us no matter what. I need to remember that always. Thank God for his unconditional love for each of us.