How To Believe God Really Loves You (When Fear Hinders Our Faith)

We often hear that God loves us, but resting in this powerful truth can be difficult. In this post, I will share how to believe God loves you as His deeply loved child.

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Although I have been a Christian for most of my life, have a seminary degree, and once worked in full-time ministry, I have always had difficulty fully believing that God loves me.

Intellectually, I knew this statement was true. He has always been faithful to me. I’ve read the stories and memorized the verses about how much God loves me. But especially in difficult times of suffering, it has been hard to rest confidently in this fact.

      

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How Do I Know That God Really Loves Me?

Knowing God loves us and resting in His love are two different things.

We know that God loves us because He sent His one and only Son to die on a cross as the sacrifice for our sins. He not only demonstrated His love for us in the sacrifice of His Son, but the death of Jesus was effectual in securing us a place in Heaven with Him for eternity.

Of course, Scripture tells us dozens of times that God loves us but why do we still struggle to trust God’s love for us?

Obstacles in Knowing God Really Loves You

Fully believing or experiencing God’s love for me has always been difficult because of one major obstacle – fear. Fear usually manifests itself in my life through anxiety.

1 John 4:18-19 tells us, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us.”

For so long, fear has played a role in my relationship with God. For some reason, I had this underlying belief that God was out to get me; He was just waiting for me to mess up before he brought his punishment.

I felt my life was a game of whack-a-mole with God; If I found myself on top or doing well in life, I needed to quickly brace myself before he would bring His judgment or suffering. I felt that if I wasn’t vigilent in obedience that God was out to get me when I gave Him the first opportunity.

I didn’t fully understand that God is for me and not against me.

I had to learn how to relate to God and His love without the presence of fear. His word says “there is no fear in love” so God was not using fear as a mechanism to speak to me or motivate me.

How Do I Accept That God Loves Me?

Fear in any form, whether it be anxiety, worry, or feeling triggered, is in no way God-based.

Instead, through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, God sees us through the lens of His love for us. God is a god of love and perfect love casts out fear.

The enemy wants to keep us in a constant state of torment where we are paralyzed by fear in its many forms. Fear involves torment, condemnation and punishment, so the enemy uses it to come against us to steal our peace.

So, if we are feeling tormented by fear in any way, I think it’s important to stop and remember that it is not from God; it is from the enemy.

Disclaimer: Fear and anxiety are God-given emotions that are a valid part of being human. However, I was often feeling consumed by fear as my most prevalent emotion on a regular basis.

The truth is that even though we are never worthy of God’s perfect love, he is a good Father who wants good things for His children. God’s goodness is part of his immutable, unchangeable character as he wants us to live abundantly in Him (John 10:10).

In our fight to overcome fear, we must let Him engage our hearts in a way to drive fear out. Through Him, we are empowered to face our fears.

The reason I struggled for so many years with anxiety was because I had a performance-based relationship with God. I wanted to do good things for God go love me and in reality that is impossible. He already loves me unconditionally based on the relationship He has with me through His Son.

So, How Do We Overcome Fear?

I came to better identify this issue when I was having extreme anxiety about a surgery. I decided to have a Prophylactic double mastectomy with DIEP Flap reconstructaion. So basically, it was a very medically complicated procedure since I was using my own tissue for resconstruction. You can read about that here.

As much as I knew I needed this procedure, the idea made me sick with worry and I wasn’t sleeping well. I started seeing a Christian counselor that helped me to understand that a consumption with fear and believing God’s love for me can’t coexist.

I’m reminded of the Dawn commercials where a drop is added to greasy, dirty dish water. The soap completely repelled the grease. The same is the case with fear and God’s love. It’s impossible for them to coexist or mingle

1 John 4:19 tells us that we love because He first loved us. God loves us as a Heavenly Father who wants to have a thriving relationship with His child.

We can better trust God’s love by learning to relate to Him as our Heavenly Father, knowing He sees us through a lens of love and not condemnation.

When you reframe your view that you are a child of God and He is a loving Father, who is for us and not against us, we can overcome false beliefs about Him.

Therefore, our prescription for this fear is learning to receive the love God has for us. That means believing that we are His dearly loved children that He leads, guides and protects every second of every day.

Know that you are held in the hands of God and you are perfectly and utterly safe.

Sometimes even when we know these facts, it can be hard to feel confident in them. Knowing isn’t always the same as trusting and sometimes trusting the truth of God’s love can be emotionally difficult.

The good news is that there are some things we can do to help our emotions catch up with what we mentally know is true.

How To Receive God’s Love

When I struggled in fear regarding my surgery, my counselor told me to listen to a guided imagery recording to help prepare myself for surgery (You can listen to it here.)

I remember that it sounded a little too “woo-woo” for me but I told her I’d give it a try since patients who listened to it regularly had much better surgical outcomes and recovery rates.

I listened to the recording and it involved visualizing myself during the surgery with talented surgeons and medical professionals doing their jobs well and me waking up to a successful surgery with very little discomfort.

This audio file helped me to mentally rehearse all things that were true until my emotions and unconscience brain could catch up to what I need was logically true.

The result was after a few days of listening to this recording, I started to feel much more at peace about the procedure. I had a calmness that I hadn’t experienced before and I had confidence that everything would be ok and it was!

Rehearsing positive TRUTHS about my surgery gave me more confidence in what was ahead. The Bible often refers to this as meditation.

Biblical meditation is the practice of deeply pondering, reflecting on or internalizing the word of God.

But did you know that worry is often a form of meditation? When we worry, we mentally rehearse our worst fears over an over.

If biblical meditation is a repetitive way to internalize God’s Word by pondering on His Truths, then worry is a repetitive way to internalize fear based on falsehood.

Both faith and fear demand you to believe in something you can’t see. You have to choose which you will believe

Meditating on scriptures about God’s love for me is helping me to reprogram my brain to see His true character. It takes some time to make this mental shift, but it’s oh so worth it.

Your mind will believe whatever you tell it to believe so feed it the most powerful form of truth – God’s Word.

How to Meditate on God’s Truth

Find comforting Scriptures and write them on cards. Read through them slowly a few minutes everyday. Take your time and think about what you are reading.

For verses about God’s love, you can download the same verses you can see in my grandma’s secretary desk by filling out the form below:

God’s Love Printable Verses

Already a Subscriber? You can find these free printables here. Just use the password at the end of your last email from Renovated Faith.

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Final Thoughts on Receiving God’s Love

For a long time I have questioned God’s unconditional love for me. I understood on an intellectual level but I struggled to experience God’s everlasting love personally.

Finally, I realized that the major obstacle in recognizing his deep love for me was fear. When I understood that fear, punishment and condemnation are not from God, I began to experience the love of Christ Jesus in a whole new way.

Dear friend, if you have any question about whether He loves you, go to Him in prayer. He wants you to be confident in His unfailing love for you, His child.

I love to hear your thoughts and questions!  Scroll down to leave a comment and I WILL reply! ❤️

Blessings,

 

 

 

 

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