Unconditional

Did you know that God loves you unconditionally? That is, he loves you with out conditions - there is no standard and no qualifications that you have to meet before God can love you.

Many people have trouble with this. We think that any thing that is free must not be worth much. So if God's love is worth having, then we have to pay for it somehow. Or we don't think God could love us - for whatever reason - because we don't measure up or are so beyond his love.

If either of these apply to you, I urge you to change your mind. For the first, God's love is truly free and you must come to believe it. God's love is worth having, but is so great that we could never afford it. It is a gift - open your heart and receive it.

For the second, you might need for God to first heal you of some hurt. Strictly speaking, none of us are worthy of God's love. That is why God's love had to come in the form of of Jesus' Cross. Our worthiness is not the primary issue. The issue is that God made us and we are his. His loves his Creation - including you! Ask God to heal anything that keeps you from opening to his love.

There is a funny thing about God's unconditional love: we have to accept it unconditionally. This might be the hardest thing of all - because of Jesus' Cross. Many of us want to say that we are basically good. But to accept God's love unconditionally means we have to accept the form it comes in - a cross.

At the intersection of God's love and who we are, we find the Cross. It may be a paradox, but accepting God's love unconditionally means repentance. Repentance is the only possible response when we see the vastness of God's love and our true condition.

I pray that you will be enveloped by God's love!