God’s Love and Ours

1 John 4:19 – “We love him, because he first loved us.”

All of us need a sense of being loved and wanted. This was very hard for me as I was growing up in an orphanage home, it was even harder when I found out as a teenager that I had come from a very large family with a lot of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I was in the orphanage for 14 years and they never came to see me or wrote to me. I began to think, “What is so wrong with me that even my own family wants nothing to do with me?” Being rejected by my family led me into a very unhappy lifestyle.

Psychologists say that severely handicapped people can be relatively happy as long as they know they are precious to someone. But many today are going through life without this assurance. Aged folks are often lonely and wonder if anyone cares, and thousands of children are wretched because their parents show them no affection. It’s hard to love others when you think no one loves you. Truly, we are seeing the fulfillment of Paul’s declaration that in the last days mankind will be “without natural affection” (2 Tim. 3:3).
This is one of the reasons many young people are rebellious and suicidal.

Whenever a Christian who feels unwanted or rejected comes to me for help, I ask them to read 1 John 4:9,10. These verses give assurance of God’s deep concern, declaring it was manifested to the whole world on the cross of Calvary. The Savior by His wonderful sacrifice has proven that He loves us unconditionally. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Even though He didn’t see anything desirable in us, He cared so much that in grace He gave His Son to die for our sins.

Seeing ourselves as the objects of such love, we will find it easy to show kindness and compassion to others. We will be able to forgive them when they wrong us, and will gladly sacrifice our own pleasures and desires for their benefit. Prayer for others will become a delight. We will know the truth of the words, “We love….because He first loved us!”