I read He Loves Me for a bible study a few years ago and it provided another step in understanding the relationship my heavenly Father desires to have with me. Which is an amazing concept. In the years since, God has continued me on this journey and drawn me from a Creator – Created, King – subject, God – worshiper experience to a Father – beloved daughter relationship. It is a beautiful place to be. And it’s a place I want to invite others.

One thing I have come to realize, fear may motivate but love captivates. And I am captivated by the God who loves me.

There are so many great quotes and I’ve included a few. He Loves Me! culminates in the fact that once we receive the love God has for us and live in it, trusting him in all things, that out of that place of abundance our love can flow toward others. Suddenly, we are no longer operating out of a place of needing from, expecting, or judging others. Instead, receiving all we need from our Father, we can extend love and grace. Because we’re living loved.

Quotes:

• …incredibly few believers live each day as if the God of the universe has great affection for them.
• The pull of religion can be far stronger than the freedom of relationship.
• I have observed all over the world that those who discover the depth of the Father’s affection for them and learn to live in it find greater passion for Jesus and freedom from sin and are more engaged with the world than anyone driven by religious obligation.
• Nothing fulfills his purpose more than when his love overwhelms you, then transforms you, and then leads you through the rest of your life as a reflection of his glory in the earth.
• Truly God has never acted toward us in any way other than with a depth of love that defies human understanding.
• …perception is not necessarily reality.  If we define God only in our limited interpretation of our own circumstances, we will never discover who he really is.
• He does love you more deeply than you’ve ever imagined; he has done so throughout your entire life.
• Learning to trust him like that is not something any of us can resolve in an instant; it’s something we’ll grow to discover for the whole of our lives.
• – the freedom to be honest, to laugh, to ask the seemingly stupid question, and to relax in one another’s presence.
• I understand why he had to take on a disguise to have the relationship with people he had always desired.
• For the first time since he walked the Garden with Adam and Eve, God was among people the way he had always wanted to be.
• Having just told them that he and the Father were one because the Father was in him, he then invited them into that same relationship.
• The friendship Jesus shared with his disciples was the model for the relationship he extends to you.
• How can mere humans enjoy such a friendship with the almighty God who created with a word all we see?
• What we have not so critically examined is whether or not threatening people with hell engages them in the relationship God has always wanted with them.
• If you are in this kingdom only because you fear the alternative, you’ve missed the greatest part of what it means to know God.
• How can we feel safe with a God who is seemingly anxious to dangle us over the flames of hell?
• He fully reflected the Father’s glory so we might know him as he really is and no longer be victims of our own misinterpretations.
• His wrath against sin was not his rejection of us in anger, but only a reflection of the depth of his love that cannot look away unconcerned as sin destroys us.
• Instead of desiring to walk in friendship with him, we are only preoccupied with securing his goodies.  It’s his blessing we want, not him!  How painful that must be for him.
• There is no one God does not love with all that he is.
• (About the Father of the Prodigal son) The father’s actions make no sense at all, unless he wanted something more for his son than mere responsible behavior.
• (Same) He didn’t want his sons’ obedience, but their hearts.
• In the long run it doesn’t matter whether rebellion or religion keeps you from a vibrant relationship with the Father; the result is still the same.  He is cheated out of the relationship he wants with you, and you never come to know how he feels about you.
• We so easily miss the point of his words when we mistakenly relegate them to the distant future involving a second coming and mansions in heaven.
• The cross stands as the pivotal event in opening the door for us to dwell in the Father’s love.
• It may take a while, but God can help us define his fatherhood based not on the failed record of broken humanity, but on what it really is to be loved by the most awesome Father in the universe.
• What is the favor line?  It’s the invisible line that tells us whether or not we’ve met enough of someone’s expectations to merit approval.
• I never knew that God was simply delighted with me as his child.
• I now know that the key to God’s favor doesn’t rest on what I give him but on what he already has given me.
• (About Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler) He only wanted him to discover what his attempts to keep the Law already should have – that he didn’t have enough in himself to meet any standard of qualification for God’s life.
• He simply put all of his confidence in the mercy of the man from God.
• Anytime we set ourselves above others, we only demonstrate how little we understand God’s mercy.
• When you are tempted to stake your relationship with God on your own goodness or your sacrifice, don’t even try.  Picture the bar so high that you’ll never find away to clear it.
• Abandoning our own attempts to establish our won worthiness is central to the power of the gospel.
• Fear is so powerful that almost all of our human institutions use various forms of it to keep people under control.
• In a fallen world, fear is the only way to hold society in check.
• He invited those around him to a God who loved them completely and to a kingdom more valuable than anything they had ever known.  He didn’t use their fears because he knew that fear was part of the problem, even their fear of God.  Though it might be easily manipulated to secure a temporal response, it would never be enough to bring them to the fullness of his Father’s glory.
• Love lies at the very core of God’s nature.
• when that love touches you, you will discover there is nothing more powerful in the entire universe.
• this Father doesn’t just seek your obedience, he desires your affection. He can have your obedience without your love, but he knows where he has your love he will also have your obedience.
• But fear isn’t in God’s nature. He fears nothing. Thus his own holiness is produced not by his fear, but by his love. In fact, fear cannot produce the holiness God wants to share with us. It is incapable of doing so. For God to transfer us to be like him, he must expel our fear and teach us the wonder of living in his love.
• …it is so critical to understand Jesus’ death on the cross as an act of love for you. .. If you see it only as God satisfying his justice, then you unwittingly empty the cross of its power.
• But God knew their disobedience was only a symptom of something he cared about far more deeply.
• Their unity flows from the fact that they absolutely love and trust one another.
• God knew that love could flourish only where trust does.
• …he gave them the greatest of all possible gifts-the potential to enter into a free and loving relationship with the God of the universe.
• God didn’t plant that tree to spell out our demise, but to allow us the freedom that would make relationship with him meaningful.
• God sees something redemptive even in letting us fail. He seems less concerned about our mistakes than how we respond to them.
• Only by learning to trust him would they experience the deepest longing of their hearts.
• For his plan was not to satisfy some need in himself at his Son’s expense, but rather to satisfy a need in us at his own expense.
• He could no longer be the Friend who walked with them in the Garden because their own sense of shame would cause them to cower whenever he approached.
• The friendship he desired with his creation was thwarted. Instead of seeking his friendship, people thought only to appease him-doing enough good to somehow convince themselves that they were worthy of his favor.
• It would not be the act of appeasement to an angry God by any sacrifice we could give, but an act of a loving God to sacrifice himself for those who were held captive in sin.
• Shame craves covering.
• There is only one covering that will save us from ourselves, and it is Jesus himself.
• When difficulties press in around us, we are most likely to doubt God’s motives toward us.
• The cross alone could not kill Jesus.
• God has never run from sinful humanity…It is not that God cannot bear to look on sin, but that we in our sin can’t bear to look on God.
• (Jesus) didn’t just deal with our sins, but with the ver nature of sin itself (that self-preferring, self-trusting nature that puts itself above God).
• Jesus became sin for us precisely because we were powerless to deal with it ourselves.
• …God’s perspective doesn’t focus on our sins as much as it focuses on the power of sin itself.
• No, the cross was not primarily about exacting punishment, it was about prevailing over sin’s power.
• (God) sees the evil that mars his creation and destroys the people he loves, and he must rid us of it. His wrath consumes evil and wickedness and as such does not exist as the opposite of his love, but as an expression of that love. He must protect and set free the object of his affection.
• It’s not people God seeks to destroy bu the sin that destroy his people.
• Even in giving us the freedom to trust him or trust ourselves, God already knew that he would suffer most for our choice. Show to him, the glory of fellowship with his created ones outweighed the price he would pat to set things right.
• In the utter despair and loneliness of the gut-wrenching agony y of the cross, Jesus did what Adam and Eve could not do while living in the most pristine and beautiful of gardens. He trusted his Father.
• No longer do we need to hesitate to trust this incredible Father and his intentions toward us, especially when we lose sight of what God is doing in our lives or question his seeming in activity.
• God never wanted us to trust others. He wanted us to love others but to trust him alone.
• We don’t enter into his kingdom by a singer’s prayer, going forward at a religious gathering, or reciting an orthodox creed, but by learning to trust who he is and by living in that trust no matter what life hurls at us.
• Religion offers us the illusion of earning acceptance, but it is only a cheap substitute for the reality of life in him.
• Our only choice is whether or not to live loved.