Turn from evil and do good, and you will live in the land forever. For the Lord loves justice, and he will never abandon the godly-Psalm 37:27-28 NLT

God loves me. 

Personally.  

He loves you too—personally—God loves every individual human on earth so personally, deeply and passionately that He has been motivated to do some kind of crazy things. Like taking on human form so He could willingly die as a sacrifice for the sins of people who were and still are mostly ungrateful and disinterested in Him (John 1:4, John 3:16, Hebrews 2:14-17). God loves us so much He didn’t care that we didn’t care.  He still chose to die on a cross so He could pay the penalty for the sins of every human who has ever lived (Romans 3:23). As a result, literally anyone who chooses to put their faith and trust in Him will be forgiven for their sins (no matter what they are) and spend eternity with Him (John 3:36, Romans 6:23)

That’s a lot of love. 

All that is the key reason Christians believe (and teach) that God doesn’t just love people, God IS love at the core of who He is. 

BUT…

What if someone does not believe God loves them? What if that someone is a Christian? 

It happens. 

Lots of Christians struggle to believe God loves them personally, sometimes without realizing it. Typically, at the root of this kind of doubt doubt are bad experiences, unrelenting trials, trauma and/or deep loss. These kinds of experiences can leave believers doubting God’s love for them. This has a massive impact on how we live out our Christian faith.  

Maybe you’re one of those people who doubts God’s love. Maybe you know someone who doubts God’s love for them. 

This matters because we cannot be wrong about ANYTHING—even a dumb thing—without some sort of consequence. If being wrong about a dumb thing (like what the weather is going to do) has consequences, then being wrong about something as serious as God’s love is bound to create some ugly issues. 

Truth-be-told it’s almost impossible to trust someone when we don’t believe they love us or have our best interest at heart. So, when painful life experiences cause us to doubt God’s goodness and love, it can cause us to stop trusting God. When that happens, we start doing things outside of God’s will for our lives to protect ourselves from further pain and loss. Oftentimes, we stop asking God for wisdom and guidance, instead, we make plans and ask God to bless them. 

This is always a bad idea. It causes us to do dumb, harmful things. We get into bad relationships and make poor financial decisions. When we doubt God’s love we end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off looking for something or someone to help us do life instead of simply asking God to help and then trusting Him to provide the help we need. 

This leads to a crazy cycle. 

 When our prayers don’t get answered the way we were hoping we stop praying. It then gets harder to hear God’s voice. Which simply reaffirms our (wrong) belief that God doesn’t care. We end up doing more of our own thing than God’s thing. This leads to more negative consequences which lead to further belief God doesn’t love us. Which leads to more of the same bad stuff. 

I told you it was crazy.  

To break the crazy cycle, we must tell ourselves the truth, so that we can get back to a place where we are trusting God (Proverbs 3:5-6). It’s simply a fact that God does love us (Romans 5:8, Romans 8:37-39, 1st John 3:1, 1st John 4:9). God doesn’t lie about anything, so He wouldn’t lie about loving us (Numbers 23:19). It’s also critical we acknowledge the reality that God does not CAUSE people to do evil and hurtful things (Ephesians 6:12, Psalm 145:9). Humans have freewill and sometimes they use their freewill to hurt others (Genesis 50:20, Psalm 27: 1-14, 2nd Timothy 3:1-5, Revelation 21:8). Unfortunately, innocent people get caught in the crossfire of all that freewill. 

God grieves when that happens. 

 It’s also critical we understand that God loves us too much JUST care about our personal happiness. God doesn’t want us to be miserable. He’s not a jerk. However, ultimately, God is much more concerned with the state of our souls than with our momentary happiness. God’s primary desire for all people is that we become conformed to the image of Jesus so that we are ready for all the good things God has prepared for us in eternity (1st Corinthians 2:9). Unfortunately, human beings are a stubborn lot. Sometimes our stubbornness leads to some self-inflicted hurt. 

But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t love us. It just means He will use anything, even self-inflicted pain or our own foolishness to mold us into the image of Jesus.

And finally,

It really helps to cultivate a heart of gratitude when we are doubting. Gratitude is a game changer when doubt creeps into our hearts. Thankfulness opens our eyes to all that God has done and is doing in our lives. A healthy dose of gratitude can literally evaporate spiritual doubt. Gratitude is seeing and acknowledging our blessings. When we do that, we cannot help but know that God is good.