Being God’s Beloved

Day 1. Preface

We all surely know that God loves us. But over the years, listening to many people, and also listening to myself, has taught me that while most of us know that God loves us, many of us don’t really know God’s love. There is an intellectual or cognitive knowing that we have, because we read it in the Bible and we celebrate it particularly at Christmas and Easter. But that truth has often not sunk below our brain into our mouth, our heart, our gut, our hands, and our feet.

Because of my training in clinical social work, I can’t help but see the psychology of this. Many of us have been well-schooled, from childhood, to doubt ourselves. Those messages we have learned as children are deeply engrained in our bones: “You never do things properly; you always mess up; why can’t you be more like so and so; if only you…; I’m disappointed in you.” Probably in most instances, these kinds of messages were not intended to break us down. Yet they remain embedded in the underlying fabric of our psyche, of our spirit, and interfere with our openness to receiving, knowing, and accepting God’s love.

Many of us have had these messages reinforced in our childhood faith in the church. We have been taught that we are terrible sinners, that God cannot stand to be in the presence of sin, that God hates the sinner, that even the very best that we do is like filthy rags to God, that we always fall short of God’s expectations, that God’s wrath is upon us, that we deserve eternal flames, and so on. There is biblical and theological truth in these messages. But they are lopsided, overemphasising our inadequacy and reinforcing our psychological vulnerability.

Ultimately, for many of us, we come into adulthood with a nagging and persistent feeling that God cannot love us; that we are unlovable; that we are damaged goods. And when we do mess up in our faith, which we all do, at least on occasion, this nagging feeling crows in triumph. And sometimes that makes it hard to return to God – we are such failures and so useless, God would be better off without us.

It is as if we know that God does not love us more clearly than we know that God does love us. This is not right.

And so, I have been wondering for some time what our lives would be like if we really, really, really believed, really knew, deep in the core of our being, that we were much loved by God. How would we be different if this truth was not just a loosely-held cognitive belief, but also a deeply-held certainty?

I suspect we’d have a much more intimate and consistent relationship with God, because we’d experience and trust in God’s abiding love. We’d be less likely to sin, because we’d be more cautious about grieving God. We’d experience less anxiety, because even (or especially) when times are hard we’d be certain that God is present and concerned. We’d be more generous, because of an abundance of love that enables us to share more love with others. We’d be better witnesses to those around us, because there would be fewer toxins and more joy in our faith.

Being God’s Beloved is intended to lead you through a series of 40 reflections on how much you are loved by God. It has a clear agenda – to convince you of this fact! It will speak to less happy topics, such as sin and wrath, but the center and focus is always on God’s love. This is because I believe, deeply and surely, that love is the center of God’s heart. And if love is at the center of God, then everything else that we talk about in our faith should be in relation to love.

I hope that by the end of this journey, you will feel immersed in God’s love, that God will have filled you up, inside and out, with God’s extravagant, generous, warm, embracing love. That this will not be something you merely know, but something you are, in your inner being. And that you will already have begun to see how naturally that transforms your Christian living, in your daily devotions, your struggle with sin, your participation in God’s mission in the world, and your witness. Because when we truly know that God loves us and when our lives begin to reflect that knowing, then we will Be God’s Beloved.

So, I am delighted that you have decided to start this 40-day devotional with me. It will be a journey that we take together as we immerse ourselves in the truth that we are much loved by God. To structure this devotional, I am following in the footsteps of those who have seen the value of a 40-day period of spiritual reflection. Rick Warren has nicely shown how 40 days is a meaningful spiritual period in the Bible:  “Noah’s life was transformed by 40 days of rain.  Moses was transformed by 40 days on Mount Sinai.  The spies were transformed by 40 days in the Promised Land.  David was transformed by Goliath’s 40-day challenge.  Elijah was transformed when God gave him 40 days of strength from a single meal.  The entire city of Nineveh was transformed when God gave the people 40 days to change.  Jesus was empowered by 40 days in the wilderness.  The disciples were transformed by 40 days with Jesus after his resurrection.”

And so my prayer is that you and I too will be transformed by these 40 days of reflection on Being God’s Beloved.

I have grouped these reflections into seven clusters, each comprising six reflections (except for the last, which is just four reflections, to complete the 40 days):  Week 1 – God’s character and initial engagement with humanity.  Week 2 – God’s love as revealed across the Old Testament.  Week 3 –God’s love in relation to other theological themes, such as sin and wrath.  Week 4 – The incarnation and message of Jesus of Nazareth.  Week 5 – The ministry and work of Jesus the Messiah.  Week 6 – Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Week 7 – Living in the Spirit of life and love.

This division of the reflections into six-day weeks is so that you can plan to have a day off each week, perhaps on Sunday, to mull over what you have done in the past week. Or perhaps to catch up if you fall behind with the readings. Or if you are doing Being God’s Beloved as part of a midweek fellowship or Bible study group, you may wish to take off that day from the reflections. You are, of course, free to structure your reflections as you like, but I encourage you to do no more than one per day, so that you have time to meditate and pray on the reflection, and so that you engage in a prolonged and rhythmic reflection on Being God’s Beloved.

I wish you God’s richest blessings as you journey through these reflections on what it means to Be God’s Beloved. I will be praying for you over this time.

Blessings and joy Adrian