There is a walk with God that each and every person was intended to have from the beginning of time 

…..the experience of God’s love.  

I’ve had the opportunity recently to speak into a young man who is going through a difficult time.  He’s made some choices that have had some really damaging consequences, and God has given me the opportunity to speak life and hope into him.

Although He grew up going to church, he grew up in what I call “religion.”  His parents were good people who loved the Lord and they gave him the best that they knew to give him, but it was more of a “do good...get good results,”  “do bad…..get bad results” type of mentality.  It was “religion,” rather than “relationship.”  It’s what his parents knew.  It’s how I raised my oldest child. It’s all I knew at the time.  I thought I was giving her my best.  I wasn’t trying to show her something that would trip her up,and yet that kind of relationship is no relationship.   

Religion teaches you to try to earn something that Jesus already paid for.   We can never earn or deserve anything from God.  We are simply the benefactors of what Jesus has already done.  He’s already paid the price.  He invites us to freely receive, and to enter into a relationship with Him, so that we can continue to discover more of His love and goodness.

When I first became aware of the invitation to enter into a “relationship” with God, my whole world changed.  I had never known a love like this.  You can’t find this love in a human being.  God’s love is a love that supersedes even the best that we can experience with any person.  Once I found it, I thought:  Everybody should know this love!

The young man I’ve been talking to has made some harmful choices, and was caught in the lie that God wouldn’t want him any more, but that’s not how God operates.  I told him that I wasn’t disappointed in him, and neither was the Lord, and that God still loved him. It rocked his world!  And then Jesus did a work in his heart.  “I can’t explain this,” the young man said to me, “but I understand what you’re saying.”  “Your spirit is coming alive,” I explained.  “This is the voice you’ve needed to hear all along.”  Too often, we kill off the voice of spirit by listening to our flesh, and believing the lies of the enemy.  Our Spirit was meant to be revived and awakened, and to hear and believe the truth of God’s Word.  Jesus loves us.  “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus”  (Romans 8:38).

No one has been denied the opportunity to know this love. The only reason someone might not be experiencing it, is if they are operating in place that is less than where they were intended to operate.  Sometimes it’s because people just don’t know what’s available, and sometimes it’s because of rebellion, and sometimes it’s simply a matter of someone believing the lie that they are unworthy.

God is always extending the invitation to receive His love.  

We start by saying "yes" to His invitation, by believing what He says,

and getting to know the One whose love changes everything.