No Love Like It

"We need have no fear of someone who loves us perfectly. His perfect love for us eliminates all dread of what he might do to us. If we are afraid, it is for fear of what he might do to us and shows that we are not fully convinced that he really loves us."
1 John 4:18 (TLB)

One day, you're going to meet God. Not with a crowd around you and not with anyone standing beside you. Just you, alone, before God's judgment seat.

Does that thought frighten you? Does it make you uneasy, uncomfortable, does it make you squirm a little? If you love God and God's love lives in you, it shouldn't.

That’s what today’s verse teaches you: You have nothing to fear, now or ever, from a Heavenly Father who loves you. "We need have no fear of someone who loves us perfectly. His perfect love for us eliminates all dread of what he might do to us.” (1 John 4:18a, TLB) Fear and love cannot occupy the same heart at the same time. Where perfect love has moved in, fear has to move out.

St. Augustine said it this way. "God loves each of us as if there were only one of us." You’re not loved in a crowd, or loved on average. You’re loved like you're the only person He has to love.

There's just no love like it. A person may go to hell unsaved, but they will never go to hell unloved. 

Even when the world makes you feel unwanted, God still wants you. In August of 1928, Mary Ann Bird was born with a severe cleft palate that required seventeen surgeries. The physical pain was bad enough, but the psychological pain was worse. She couldn't blow up a balloon or drink from a water fountain, and her classmates teased her without mercy for it.

Mary Ann was also deaf in one ear, so she dreaded the school's yearly hearing test, a "whisper test" where each child repeated back a phrase whispered into their good ear. To avoid failing, she always cheated by cupping her hand around her good ear.

That year her teacher was Miss Leonard. She later said, "I waited for those words which God must have put into her mouth, seven words that changed my life." Miss Leonard leaned close and whispered, "I wish you were my little girl."

From the moment you were born, God has been leaning close and saying the same thing to you. "I wish you would be my child." Because of His love for you, and there's no love like it, you can become His child today.

Prayer: Father, thank You that Your love for me removes all fear of what’s to come. Help me stop dreading the day I stand before You and start resting in how completely You already love me. In Jesus' name, Amen.