ODJ: you are loved
September 10, 2011
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 (v.19).
READ: Ephesians 3:14-21
A counselor was conducting a family therapy session with the parents of a teenager who had been caught using drugs. The parents excused their daughter’s drug use, saying that it was no big deal and just a phase that most teenagers go through. After a while the counselor told the parents to leave the room and, turning to the daughter, asked her what she had heard. She replied, “I heard that they don’t love me.” The counselor realized that the daughter was dabbling in drugs to get her parents’ attention. If she had felt genuinely loved by them, she would have wanted to love them back by choosing not to disobey. Like that daughter, I often disobey my heavenly Father. My sin distresses me, and I beg God to help me love Him more. While this isn’t a bad thing to pray, Paul says that it’s even more important that we understand how much God loves us. Only when we appreciate “how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is” will we be eager to love Him back (Ephesians 3:18). Consider the many ways God continually loves you. He overcame incalculable odds just to bring you into existence, and ever since then He has sustained your life with food, family, and friendship. He gave His life for you, dying on the cross so you might live with Him forever. He didn’t go to all this trouble to let you drift away, so He “disciplines those He loves, and He punishes each one He accepts as His child” (Hebrews 12:6). No child enjoys boundaries and discipline, but imagine how you’d feel if God didn’t care. God loves you too much to shrug at your sin, so rejoice when you feel His firm hand of discipline. It means you are loved.
—Mike Wittmer
What does it mean if you sin repeatedly and don’t receive a divine rebuke? Why is it so vital that you receive God’s loving discipline?
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