Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds … How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings … Pour out your unfailing love on those who love you. –Psalm 36:5, 7, 10 (NLT)
Scripture proves God’s love by showing that He created us in His image, pursued us despite our sin, and ultimately demonstrated His sacrificial love through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Nothing can separate us from His love. But still, we often struggle to believe God really loves us. We can accept salvation but still miss the biggest treasure: His unconditional love. Ironically, our head knowledge of God’s loving acts doesn’t always translate to us experiencing God’s love.
Only God can open our eyes to His love for us. Thankfully, three biblical heroes had opened eyes and hearts to tell us about their experience of God’s love for them: King David, John the disciple, and the Apostle Paul.
Throughout the Psalms, David talks of the vastness and protection of God’s love and asks for more: “Pour out Your unfailing love.” And John—frankly he sounds arrogant referring to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” at least five times (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20). But was he arrogant or just expressing something he’d understood and experienced, perhaps more than the other disciples? Could it be that a veil was removed for John and David simply because they asked, “Show me your love. Remove the veil from my eyes so I can know in my heart and mind, not just your love for humanity, but your love for me”?
Paul asked the Father to reveal His love:
I fall to my knees and pray to the Father … I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. –Ephesians 3:14, 16, 18-19 (NLT)
The much-forgiven Paul connected the dots between God’s love for him and the power that came with it. He knew the Ephesians were missing the love boat of God.
We can miss it too—all because we don’t ask Him to reveal His love to us, because we’re too busy to be still and know, or because we think we don’t deserve it. And truthfully, we don’t deserve it, but God still reveals His love freely. It’s free because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It’s free because we have no hope of earning it. It’s the only free love that’s perfect—always affirming, always comforting, always protecting.
God’s presence is perfect love. So invite Him to reveal His love to you like David did, like John did, like Paul did. God’s love is limitless. David, the “man after God’s own heart,” loved and trusted God because he had experienced the Father’s love for him. This is why he exhorts us: “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Acts 13:22 (NIV); Psalm 34:8 (NASB). He didn’t want us to miss out on God’s love for us! Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal even just one more drop of the Father’s love to you each day, and watch how those fresh revelations begin to change your world.