How Does God Love Us? What is Agape Love?

So today's episode is episode two of our series of the heart. So last week we went over what is in your heart and making sure that we are posturing our heart towards God. So if you haven't already checked that episode out, go and check that out. Today I want to go into how God loves us and I'm going to pair it with scripture

First I want to say a quick prayer. LORD, I pray that you lift up every single person reading this right now. LORD thank you so much for your unconditional love, mercy, and grace. I pray that you wrap your arms around every person reading this. I pray that you help them to see the love that you have for us. Open their eyes to see that love and open up their hearts to receive that love, LORD. I just thank you for guiding and protecting us and always being right here with us no matter what. I love you with every ounce of my being. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Let's get into some scripture:

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." -Romans 5:8

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

-John 3:16

"No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God." -John 16:27

In this verse, is Jesus talking to His disciples. I also just wanted to point out that if you haven't ever really read very much of the Bible, you don't really know it, but you want to dive deep, I would start in the book of John. The book of John is incredible. There are so many amazing things in there. I have Bible studies on all the chapters of the book of John. I have podcast episodes on them as well as study guides in my Facebook group, it's called Faith Fuels My Fire on Facebook. If you go on that group on the guides tab, it'll have all the info for these study guides if you want something to go along with or if you want little mini bite-sized Bible studies while reading the book of John. I would recommend getting into it. There are many amazing things in the book of John about Jesus, His ministry, the disciples walking with Him, and his teachings, and about the crucifixion, the resurrection, and all of that. So I would recommend if you don't know where to start in the Bible to start with the Book of John.

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

-1 John 3:1

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." -1 John 4:7-12

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." -John 15:13

This was Jesus talking about himself to his disciples.

So throughout all these verses, what do we see? We see how does God love us. God loves us unconditionally. He loves us so much that He gave his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Jesus loves us so much that He was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to die for us. Because we love and believe in Jesus, God the Father loves us. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. When we have that relationship with Jesus, when we believe in Him, and we realize and recognize that he is the only way into heaven, and we ask him to come into our hearts and forgive us of our sins, we have eternal life in heaven with him and God the Father. There's no greater love than someone dying for their friend, giving up their life, that is what Jesus did for us. He gave up his life for us. God the Father sent His Son to give up His life for us. That is the love that God has for us.

We are God's children and He has that fatherly love for us, that unconditional love. He wants us to obey Him and seek to do right by Him. Just like for most of us, our father, mother, or our guardian, the person that was there helping us grow up and being there for us, wants the best for us. They love us unconditionally. Even though they may not like all the things that we do and they want us to obey them, they still love us and they're never going to leave us or forsake us. That is God for us. I know there are some people out there who didn't have that father, mother, or guardian. Everyone's situation is different, but when you have God the Father in your life, then you are always going to have that because he is your Father.

God loves us unconditionally and He loves us with an Agape love. I want to go into this a little bit. I'm going to go more into the different meanings of the Greek word of love next week because I'm going to go into scripture that my pastor talked about that I wanted to go more into about how we should love God. Today I wanted to go into the definition of Agape love because that is the love that God has for us.

So there are different Greek meanings or Greek words for the word love. In English love is just love, right? You can say "I love pizza" and "I love my mother," and if you have a lot of love for your mother, that love for your mother is more than the love for pizza, but we don't have any different words for it. With Greek, they do have different words for love. So agape love is pure, willful, sacrificial, selfless love. It is a divine love. It is a love that only God can provide. But also when we have God in us, we can love God with an agape love.

So how does God love us? He loves us with an agape love. He has that sacrificial, selfless love towards us. He loves us unconditionally. He's never going to leave us. He's never going to forsake us. He sees everything. He knows the mistakes that you've made. He knows everything you've done in your life and He has still never left. He's never going to leave. He's never going to love you any more or any less than He loves you right now because he loves you to the fullest and there's nothing you can do to make Him love you less. There's also nothing you could do to make him love you more. Honestly, that makes me feel great because I don't have to strive to do the greatest I can do to get more love from God. After all, he gives it so willfully and so effortlessly. He gives that unconditional love to His children. Whenever we believe in Jesus and have eternal life, we have that unconditional love from God, the fruit of the spirit, the Holy Spirit within us, and God loves us with that agape love. That doesn't mean everything's going to go great in our life. That doesn't mean that He's going to protect us from all the bad things and all the bad people in this world. It doesn't mean that we are not going to face hardships because Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." But just because we face hard times, just because things don't go our way, just because things happen that we don't understand does not mean that God doesn't love us. It is very important to have that close relationship with God, pray to him, seek to live and have a heart like him, and do all those things. But God's love is an agape love. His love is sacrificial. Christ died for us while we were sinners. If that doesn't tell you right there that his love is unconditional, I don't know what does. Christ gave up His life for us, while we were sinners he died for us so that we may have eternal life with him.

So that is it for today's episode. Next episode, I'm going to go into how we should love God, so make sure you stay tuned for that.

I love you guys so much.

Never forget to choose faith over fear.

-Lorena Camille (Faith Fuels My Fire)

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