How To Know For Sure God Loves You

Contents

Introduction:        3

Chapter One: What Is God’s Will For Your Life?  7

Chapter Two: Reality Of Fantasy     11

Chapter Three: A Shattered Dream    16

Chapter Four: Why Does God Stop Bad Things?  24

Chapter Five: The Solution      30

Chapter Six: The Blood Covenant     36

Chapter Seven: Our Part      40

Chapter Eight: A Greater Benefit     47

Chapter Nine: The War       53

Chapter Ten: The Bride      63

Chapter Eleven: Life Forever!     68

Introduction

Probably everyone has wondered at some time or other whether God loves them.  We may hear the catchphrase God loves you or Jesus loves you and look around at our lives, wondering where the evidence of such a statement is. 

Maybe you are in a good place and can take a Big Picture view of things right now.  When everything is going well in our lives, we can think about big questions like if God is love, Why are there wars?  Why is there sickness and death?  Why do financial disasters destroy people’s livelihoods?  Why do natural disasters wreak peoples lives?  Why hasn’t He put an end of Covid?  And the list goes on.  It doesn’t seem like God is in control or, if He is in control, He doesn’t seem to be very loving.  Where is this ‘God is love’ that we hear talked about?

Maybe you are in a bad place right now, and everything is personal.  Why did you get cancer?  Why did you have abusive parents?  Why were you a crime victim?  Why can’t you ever seem to make enough money?  Or is a loved one suffering, and you feel their pain?  Or why is Covid destroying my family or my ability to work?  Or whatever personal events have devastated your life.  Life is not fair!  You see no evidence of God’s love in your life.  If anything, it seems like He hates you and is out to get you.

Take the time to read these few, short chapters in order, and I will show you

how you can know for sure that God loves you personally, _____________.

[Every time you see ________________ in this book, write in your name.]

What Is Love?

Before we begin, we need to agree on what we mean by love.  Take a few minutes and write down what love means to you.  What is it that makes [or you think would] make you experience love?

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Love is often equated simply with sex or sexual feelings in our sex-crazed society.  Yet since God is a Spirit without a body, and we are spirits in bodies, such a definition is meaningless.  And, in fact, sex can be an expression of hate or selfishness, as many people have sadly experienced.

Many people will equate love with specific emotions.  They look to love as expressed by:

Someone who genuinely likes them for being themselves,

Someone cares for them on their good and bad days,

Someone who pays attention to them,

Someone who will accept and fulfill them,

Someone who cares for their safety and understands their fears,

Someone who does not criticize or condemn them. 

We could go on, but you get the idea.  You may have come up with different ideas of how you experience love.  I suspect we could boil almost all the ideas down to unconditional acceptance and companionship. 

But love must go deeper than the emotional level of our lives.  For example, we hear of - and maybe you have experienced - a marriage breakup or unfaithfulness because we are no longer in love.  What they mean is that they no longer have a high emotion that they equated with love.  True love includes emotions, but it does not depend on it.  Love will continue on even if the emotions are empty.  Love is a commitment to work toward the other person’s best interests without wavering through the ups and downs of emotions and whether the other person reciprocates or not.

Does that sound about right to you?  Would you feel love from God if you knew:

He accepted you unconditionally,

Wanted to see you fulfilled as a person,

Cared deeply about your safety and,

Had a total commitment to your best interests, whether you appreciate it or not? 

Would that, at least, be a good start?

As the title states, it is the purpose of this short book to show you - no matter what your current experiences, past traumas, or lifestyle choices -

how you can know that God loves you, _______________.  You may not believe me now, and truthfully, you may continue to the end and still not be convinced, but, at least, you will have given it a fair hearing.  Will you do that for yourself?  So much, both now and in the future, depends on what you choose to do now.  Invest a little time, read this short book, and carefully consider its contents.

Discovery Quest

[A Discovery Quest is a fun project to help enrich your knowledge and application of the Chapter.]

Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 13 below quoted from the NIV and Passion versions of the Bible.

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NIV Bible

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres...And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Passion Bible

Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance.  Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.  Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up...Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.

2.  Make a list of what 1 Corinthians 13 says about love, then answer three questions:  Are there people in my life who love me in some or most of these ways [if so, use names and examples]?  Are there people in my life whom I love in some or most of these ways [if so use names and examples]?  Do I feel that God loves me in some or most of these ways [if yes, give examples]?

Chapter 1

What is God’s Will For Your Life?

In order to know if God loves us, we need to know the will of God for our lives.  If we are going to discover what God wants for our lives, we will need to look at the original design.  It is there we will see how things are supposed to be.  We will look at why they aren’t that way now and what we can do about it later.  But if we begin to understand that God loves us, we have to look at how He meant things to be.  We can only really see this in Genesis Chapters 1 and 2.  Chapter 1 gives us an overview, and Chapter 2 gives us details on some aspects of what happened at the dawn of time.

Take a few minutes and read these two chapters in your Bible.

We see from Genesis 1:1-25 that God created the perfect environment.  All was beautiful.  There was plenty of delicious, healthy food through plants and trees [1:11-13].  No one would have any reason to go hungry.  God balanced the sun, moon, seasons, land, and seas so that there would be moderate weather.  No blasting heat, no blistering cold, no violent storms.  Nature was in perfect balance.

We also see that God created a wide variety of life, such as birds, animals, and ocean creatures.  Yet none of these were violent or harmful.  The lamb could literally lie beside the lion without fear of being eaten.  You could swim with a great white shark in perfect harmony if you wanted.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.  Gen. 2:8-9a, NIV

This entire perfect environment was created specifically by God for humanity.  It was designed to fit together and work together for the common good. 

Although the original economy was not money-based, God made gold and precious stones for beauty, and to so show that He did not want anyone to have lack in any area of life.  God did not desire anyone to experience poverty on any level.

As the crowning achievement, God created human beings.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;  male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. And it was so.  Gen. 1:27-30, NIV

The first thing to consider is that God made man and woman equal.  They were both made in His image.  What does it mean to be made in the image of God?  The answer to that could be a course in itself; however, here are

some brief points.  Remember this, _______________, you are valuable because you are made in the image of God Himself.  If doesn’t matter if you were conceived in rape, or had abusive parents, or were rejected by your parents, or whether you had the most wonderful of homes - you are valuable because you are made in the image of God.  Every time God looks at you, He sees a little bit of Himself.

God doesn’t have a physical body, so our body, as fantastic of a living machine that it is, is not in the image of God.  God is a Spirit, and we are also primarily spirits who currently live in bodies.  Our spirits are able to communicate with God Himself, which is part of being in His image.  To have real, deep communication, you have to be like something else.  A dog may understand certain basic communications, but it is impossible to have a deep two-way conversation with a dog because it is not in our image.  So, part of being in God’s image is the ability [perhaps untapped and certainly not used to its fullest potential] to communicate with God.

Other aspects of being in the image of God are the ability to have creative thought, make independent decisions, and feel and express a wide variety of emotions on a level that the animal kingdom cannot.  So, God created us with the ability to enjoy and grow in beautiful relationships with Himself and with other human beings.

When it comes to our bodies, almost all of our cells have been replaced every 7 - 10 years.  Your body, literally, was originally designed as a living machine for you to use forever.  Your body was never meant to grow old and die.  Death was not part of the original design.  Although we have lived with it for so long that it seems a natural part of life, it is actually unnatural. 

Adam and Eve were given responsibility and authority.  This shows that God desired them to be fulfilled in life.  They could have a sense of genuine accomplishments without a lot of the frustration and problems that often hinder us today. 

Genesis 2 shows us that Adam was created first, but he was lonely.  God did not want that ache to be in his heart, so He created Eve.  They were a perfect couple, enjoying a mutually satisfying relationship.  Human companionship, as well as Divine companionship, are part of the original design.

So putting this all together, what was God original design for your life,

_______________?  God desired that you live in harmony with nature, never experience harsh weather conditions, enjoy the wide variety of creatures in the earth without fear of harm, never go hungry, never know poverty, have fulfilling [not frustrating] work and accomplishments, have mutually beneficial relationships with other human beings, and have an enriching relationship with God Himself in a body that is immortal.  That is your original design.  That was God’s will for you.  That is the God Who loves you.

However, I am willing to bet that you are not experiencing your original design.  I know I am not.  Something happened to change the original design to what it is now.  What happened?  If God is All-Powerful and Loving, why didn’t He stop it?  We will learn what went wrong [and what God did about it], but first, we have to understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

We will look at that in the next chapter, but now...

Discovery Quest

1.  Write down ten things that you can be thankful for.

2.  Sign up for the God’s Word To You course, so you can receive one selection of encouraging Bible verses every week for a year.  You may sign up here: https://www.free-bible-study-lessons.com/Gods-word-to-you.html

Chapter 2

Reality Or Fantasy

Before we look at what went wrong, we need to take a moment to understand the difference between Fantasy and Reality.  While it may seem obvious, we live in a world that values fantasy over reality.  People buy into the illusion that they can create their own reality.  They believe that whatever they want, they can make it happen.  Unfortunately for them, that fantasy bubble will eventually burst.  Let me illustrate...

Let’s say Shane is up in an airplane getting ready to go skydiving.  He is excited as he gets ready for his first jump ever.  Shane believes that he can define his own reality.  He believes that he can choose the consequences for his actions.  Therefore, he intends to jump out of the airplane without a parachute.  He fully believes that, since he can define his own reality, he can have a thrilling jump and land safely at the bottom.  He can live in this fantasy bubble in the airplane.  He can even continue to believe in it on the way down, but eventually that fantasy will burst to his ultimate destruction. 

As foolish as this example may seem, you have only to look around you to see ordinary people as well as judges, politicians, and others who think they can create their own reality.  For awhile it may seem to work; however, they will meet with the ground sooner or later.

Shane believed that he could redefine the Law of Gravity for his own pleasure.  When Shane met the