"God Doesn't Love Me"

"Yeah, I know, the Bible says 'God so loved the world' but that means the planet -- not people like me."  I know people who feel this way; who insist that it's impossible for God to love someone who is like they are.  The way some people act, it is certain they don't feel loved, or believe that God loves them. But is God's love for us true, whether or not we believe it?

Here's how Paul put it in Ephesians 1:  "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." This says that the Father committed himself a long time ago -- really, before time existed to measure 'a long time ago' -- to create us and bring us into his circle of love. And to create the mechanism for that inclusion, the Son (we know him now as Jesus Christ) committed to come into human flesh, to bring us to the Father through the Spirit's work. 

People hadn't been made yet, and the first sin hadn't been committed when all this planning took place. But because God (whom we know as Father, Son and Spirit) created us with the freedom to make choices, it was inevitable that somebody, sometime, would make the wrong choice and send us all down the wrong path. So the decision of God to love us and save us in spite of our sins was inevitable, right from the first.  It was part of the package.

That means this:  God already knows what kind of person you are, and loves you anyway.  Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh, loved you so much he went through the same meat-grinder of physical life that you go through, and then died to pay for all our lousy decisions (including the idea that God doesn't love us!) and then was brought back to life to give us life.  "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and since God himself is limitless, God's love is limitless,which means he loves you whether you're having a good day (or life) or a bad day (or life).  He created you and me out of love, and he intends to love us forever.

That's his story, and he's sticking to it.