Quotes & Sayings About God Loving Us

Grieving the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). Our anger grieves God's Spirit, not only producing bitter fruit but quenching the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Rather than operating with love, joy, and peace toward others, a bitter person becomes hateful, negative, and restless, closing off his heart toward others. Bitter people become very unlike themselves. The most loving and joyful people in the world can become hateful, irrational pessimists if they let bitterness take root and don't forgive. Believe it or not, bitterness even hurts us physically. "A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones" (Proverbs 17:22). The tension of trying to contain it can harden our facial features and make us lose the radiance of our countenance, even causing a chemical imbalance in our bodies and lowering our resistance to disease. — Stephen Kendrick

Central to knowing the Father is understanding the revealed pattern of family. The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and is ordained of God. Living in loving family relationships not only brings us great happiness, but it also helps us learn correct principles and prepares us for eternal life. In addition, family relationships help us know, love, and understand the Father. This is one reason Latter-day Saints have always emphasized the importance of marriage and family both in the Church and in society. God's plan provides a way for family relationships to extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families. — Quentin L. Cook

It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I — James Baldwin

Our poor people are great people, a very lovable people, They don't need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love and they need our respect. We need to tell the poor that they are somebody to us that they, too, have been created, by the same loving hand of God, to love and be loved. — Mother Teresa

How can she stand up there so tall as she's telling us how her mother beat her and her father molested her when she was a little girl? How is it possible for her to look so proud? How is she not being consumed by shame? She should be disintegrating before our eyes. She should be struck by lightning, and God's big, angry, booming voice should be shaking the room with "How dare you? I told you never to tell." But that's not her God, she says. Her God is loving and kind and wants what's best for her. Her God loves peace and serenity and forgiveness. Her God doesn't make her keep secrets. I thought I knew God all my life, but maybe it was some other guy the whole time. I want this God. I want Val's God. I want a God who doesn't make me jump through hoops and hate myself to earn his love. — Amy Reed

I think one of the sweetest proofs we have of the Father's loving care for us is that we often find in this life the things which gave us great happiness below. — Rebecca Ruter Springer

God cares more about us abiding by His commandments and loving big - feeling deeply alive and free from the traps of perfection and comparison. He's watching us scurry about, saying, "Sweet girls, why are you so hard on yourselves? All this worry and busyness is for what? I've given you all you need. — Emily Ley

What a beautiful world God, in His loving kindness to His creatures, has given us! What a shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge of right should mar His gifts ... — Robert E.Lee

Being Christian is not just obeying orders but means being in Christ, thinking like him, acting like him, loving like him; it means letting him take possession of our life and change it, transform it, and free it from the darkness of evil and sin ... Let us show the joy of being children of God, the freedom that living in Christ gives us which is true freedom, the freedom that saves us from the slavery of evil, of sin and of death! — Pope Francis

When we come to know God as our loving Father, we, above all, find a safe place. A place where we are protected, where we can rest from our feelings. He is our "hiding place." (Psalm 32:7) It's a place where healing is possible because we don't have to pretend anymore. God will love and accept us as we are. — New Way Today

We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy. — John Piper

We can do nothing of any measure for Him, save loving Him. Bella teaches us that is enough. In fact, it is all that matters. — Karen Santorum

If Christians are all loving and full of God's grace (like some of us really are), do they truly love their neighbor? Would they catch a grenade for one of us (like some of us would for them because we truly have love in our hearts)? — Solange Nicole

Jesus did not pay the penalty for our misdeeds so we can continue disobeying God with abandon; rather, in dying on the cross, Jesus not only canceled our spiritual debt but also cured our spiritual disease. When we put our trust in Christ, He forgives our sins and also begins the work of changing us from the inside to become holy and loving like Him, and like God our Father. Jesus does this through the Holy Spirit, whom He sent. Salvation by grace does not mean we stay impure sinners forever. Rather, it means that God forgives all our sins and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves by paying the penalty for our sins and working to eliminate sin from our lives. He does this in two stages: while we are mortal, the Holy Spirit changes our hearts so that we begin to live in a way that is more pleasing to God, even though we still commit sin; and then in the resurrection at the end of history, we will be made morally and spiritually perfect beings. — Nabeel Qureshi

The Triune God is in the world, nearer to us than we are to ourselves, yet the world is also encompassed by his loving presence. He does have the whole world in his hands, even while he inhabits the whole world. For Christians, being saved means being caught up into this communion, indwelled by God and indwelling in him, and being opened up so that other people have room in us and we in them. — Peter J. Leithart

As the children of God, we think of Him as a perfect, almighty, loving, caring and forgiving persona. We pray to Him to bless us and our food, and to fix our troubles. Will we ever become the grown-ups of God? — Vinko Vrbanic

The angels are thoughts of love sent from God. Since God is continuously expressing loving thoughts, there are an infinite number of angels. They are very real messengers, sent by God, to help us feel peace and joy. — Doreen Virtue

God is our Creator. He is loving, holy, and just. One day he will execute perfect justice against all sin. People are made in the image of God. We are beautiful and amazing creatures with dignity, worth, and value. But through our willful, sinful rebellion against God, we have turned from being his children to his enemies. Still, all people have the capacity to be in a restored loving relationship with the living God. Christ is the Son of God, whose sinless life gave him the ability to become the perfect sacrifice. Through his death on the cross, he ransomed sinful people. Christ's death paid for the sins of all who come to him in faith. Christ's resurrection from the dead is the ultimate vindication of the truth of these claims. The response God requires from us is to acknowledge our sin, repent, and believe in Christ. So we turn from sin, especially the sin of unbelief, and turn to God in faith, with the understanding that we will follow him the rest of our days. — J. Mack Stiles

If my brothers and sisters in Christ continue to tell me something about myself that I do not see as true and accurate, I must come to a place where I trust the body, looking at me objectively, more than I trust myself, looking at me subjectively. This is especially true when we are dealing with people who know and love us, those who live and serve in close proximity. Praise God for loving Christian spouses, siblings, and even children in whom both the Spirit of God and a willingness to be lovingly honest abide. — Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

When the people of God abandoned the covenant of love and fidelity, drawn as we are by the appeal of shallow, empty pleasures, God removed every possible obstruction to the covenant by being faithful for us, by becoming like us and subjecting Himself to the very worst within us, loving us all the way to the cross and all the way out of the grave. — Rachel Held Evans

Spend some time thanking God for loving us enough to give us His rules. - Kelly Combs — Gary Chapman

The earth is a loving God's gift to us, and we show our love for His work by practicing good stewardship. - Janet Graham — Gary Chapman

Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving. — Dan Millman

There is no one, after God, who loves us as much as this most loving Mother does. — Alphonsus Liguori

So many things beat upon us in a lifetime that simply enduring may seem almost beyond us ... But the test a loving God has set before us is not to see if we can endure difficulty. It is to see if we can endure it well. We pass the test by showing that we remembered Him and the commandments He gave us. And to endure well is to keep those commandments whatever the opposition, whatever the temptation, and whatever the tumult around us. — Henry B. Eyring

And like our Savior, who poured out His life and blood so we have reason to rejoice, we were made to lay down our lives and give until it hurts. We are most alive when we are loving and actively giving of ourselves because we were made to do these things. It is when we live like this that the Spirit of God moves and acts in and through us in ways that on our own we are not capable of. This is our purpose for living. This is our hope. — Francis Chan

I do not see how we can help thinking about God when He is so good to us all the time. Let me tell you how it seems to me that we come to know about our heavenly Father. It is from the power of love which is in our own hearts. Love is at the soul of everything. Whatever has not the power of loving must have a very dreary life indeed. We like to think that the sunshine and the winds and the trees are able to love in some way of their own, for it would make us know that they were happy if we knew that they could love. And so God who is the greatest and happiest of all beings is the most loving too. All the love that is in our hearts comes from him, as all the light which is in the flowers comes from the sun. And the more we love, the more near we are to God and His Love. — Phillips Brooks

October 1 Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life. Psalm 23:6 God told King Hezekiah he was going to die, but Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and cried out to God. In response, God added fifteen years to the king's life. But no sooner had he recovered than he started sounding as if his close encounter with death came with an automatic doctorate, as if the decision to spare one of God's own has anything to do with loving one person more than another. God cannot love us more or less than He does at this moment. He chooses to heal and not to heal for His own reasons. All His decisions come from His love. But whether He chooses to heal or take us home, His love remains constant. — Beth Moore

To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something as beautiful for him. — Mother Teresa

Every time we give in to selfishness and say "No" to God, we spoil his loving plan for us. — Pope Francis

The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God. — Jerome K. Jerome

Like infants with their mothers, we're helpless before the God who feeds us, cares for us and embraces us with even greater devotion than that of a loving mother with nursing babies." Does a nursing babe have to "be good" to earn that love-to deserve that tender, intimate feeding? No. He has only to open his mouth and be fed.
And so with us.
My — Rachel Marie Stone

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world. Let love's lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e'er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say, What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word? — Neville Goddard

Before the coming of Jesus Christ, men fled away from God and, being attached to the earth, refused to unite themselves to their Creator. But the loving God has drawn them to Himself by the bonds of love, as He promised by the prophet Osee [Hosea]: "I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bonds of love" (11:4). These bonds are the benefits, the lights, the calls to His love, the promises of Paradise which He makes to us, but above all, the gift which He has bestowed upon us of Jesus Christ in the Sacrifice of the Cross and in the Sacrament of the Altar ... — Alphonsus Liguori

Religion has no power if God is not truly 'dangerous,' but religion also seeks to manage God, and make God safe.
The second commandment speaks against the management of God. We cannot help but make our images of God, for God has given us imagination. But every image we make of God is finally a box: a cage, potentially an idol, from which the living God keeps breaking out. And if we try to keep God there, then God comes out with 'jealousy' to overturn our careful construction.
The third commandment speaks against the management of God. To take God's name in vain is to make God useful to our projects and ourselves. We are wont to trivialize the truth of God and then disparage it for being trivial. We are told God's name in order to love this God, but loving God is not managing God but fearing [respecting] God. And with God, the attitudes of love and fear [respect] are not contradictory but complementary. — Daniel James Meeter

God loves us. May we discover the beauty of loving and being loved. — Pope Francis

God is loving us - you and me - this moment, just as we are and not as we should be. — Brennan Manning

God knew that children grow and mature best in a stable, loving family, and this was one reason He gave marriage to us. — Billy Graham

There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at all the beauty in the world? Only a monster god, a demon of the darkness. — George R R Martin

God is loving you into better relationships. He is loving you into being a more loving person. The more we grow in love, the less offended we become. The less offended we become, the more easily and quickly we get healed when people do wound us. — Graham Cooke

There are guys bleeding to death who don't know it, they're smiling, they're talking, they don't feel pain because they're in shock, they ask you for some water and then they're dead. On D-day I ran past a guy lying on his spilled guts with his eyes closed and his thumb in his mouth. Eisenhower's speech had been read to us over the loudspeaker by our commander when we crossed the channel that morning. What valor and inspiration were in his words- all about how we were embarked on a great crusade, that the hopes and prayers of a liberty loving people were going with us ... I got gooseflesh when he asked for the blessing of almighty god on this great and noble undertaking. But how to reconcile that with spilled guts on a beach and flies in the eyes of some dead nineteen year old kid who traded his life for some words on paper? — Elizabeth Berg

There is complete hope for terminal illness in the power of the Almighty God. The hands of Jesus are healing hands...the hands of Jesus are saving hands. Jesus brought peace and restoration, reconciliation, power, purpose, love, understading, purity and compatibility with him and the world we live in. we are healed through him. He mends brokenness and gives us back our lives which are stollen by the trials and suffering of this dark world. He is the light and life giving God. We ought to pray in our daily lives to receive from God, his help, upholding power and healing in the Name of Jesus Christ his one and only Son. When we ask from him...then we receive healing, relief from suffering, we stop living in fear of death. Read these books and experience the real presence of the supernatural, almighty sovereign and loving God. — Stellah Mupanduki

Our dreams will always tell us what we are missing in our lives. The smaller we make them tells God how little faith we have in him to make them come true. — Shannon L. Alder

C. S. Lewis said, "When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on . . . up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."21 — Randal S. Chase

God uses people not only to nurture us, but also to open our eyes to sins, selfishness, and denial in us. Love also means saying, "I hold this against you," as Jesus did when he confronted the churches (Rev. 2:4, 14, 20). Being confronted on character issues isn't pleasant. It hurts our self-image. It humbles us. But it doesn't harm us. Loving confrontations protect us from our blindness and self-destructiveness. — Henry Cloud

God's loving discipline brings us face-to-face with our pride. — Max Anders

We are not fit for a place in God's family; the idea of his loving and exalting us sinners as he loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild
yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means. — J.I. Packer

I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back. — Iris Murdoch

In some mysterious way, in all his brokenness, he reveals to us our own brokenness, our difficulties in loving, our barriers and hardness of heart. If he is so broken and so hurt and yet is still such a source of life, then I, too, am allowed to look at my own brokenness and to trust that I, too, can give life to others. I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions. It's okay to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness. That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience. I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too. And I can trust that I am loved just as I am, and that I, too, can love and grow. — Rick Santorum

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival. It is even (well used) a preparation for that. — C.S. Lewis

A loving, just and merciful God who created everything that exists would therefore love all creation equally. Such a God would have no "chosen people" for we would all be God's chosen people, each of us created in the image and likeness of pure and perfect Holy Love itself. — Karlyle Tomms

Our method of proclaiming salvation is this: to point out to every heart the loving Lamb, who died for us, and although He was the Son of God, offered Himself for our sins ... by the preaching of His blood, and of His love unto death, even the death of the cross. — Nicolaus Zinzendorf

God could have created us without loving us, but He would not have gone to the Cross without loving us. — Randy Alcorn

When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation... — Dylan Morrison

Mercy is God's loving response to sinners; and mercy is our loving response to others - and to ourselves - in circumstances of need. To this I would add that mercy, as an experience of love, has an unexpected quality - something unforeseen or unanticipated. We talk about mercy when we feel or offer forgiveness, when we find or give help and assistance, but we also speak about "mercy" when we are surprised by good deeds that catch us unawares and transform our lives for the better. — Mathew N. Schmalz

The truth is that each of us fall short of loving unconditionally. We don't love others the way God loves us. Yet Jesus extended perfect love by living and dying for all of our sins. In spite of our failures, weaknesses, and selfishness, He sacrificed His own life so we could have eternal life. — Dana Arcuri

One of the best parts of being human is other humans. It's true, because life is hard; but people get to show up for one another, as God told us to, and we remember we are loved and seen and God is here and we are not alone. We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. — Jen Hatmaker

To suggest that the merciful, longsuffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of 'grace' to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy. — Tim LaHaye

I learned that one person hurting another really is like a hand curling into a fist to smash the foot. And that all that really matters is family and other people. And that the purpose of life is to find the Light of God, but not the light from some old guy with a beard sitting up there judging us. The light is the love we give each other on our way back home. And that God wouldn't mind if we spent a little less time telling him how great he is and a little more time loving each other, and not just the people we're supposed to love, but everyone. — Paul H. Magid

God has graciously called us; now we must live up to that calling. That cannot mean less than that we should become increasingly holy, self-denying, loving, full of integrity, steeped in the knowledge of God and his Word, delighted to trust and obey our heavenly Father. — D. A. Carson

If God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn't draw us toward what is best for us (even if that happens to be Himself)? — Francis Chan

The Fathers intent desire is that none would 'perish'. The promise God has given us is one of 'liberation'- Freedom. Being set free "from" captivity and reconciled "to" your Father. Intimacy with Jesus garners son-ship with Abba. As Jesus "demonstrated" that Son-ship of Grace he said, 'I only "say" and "do" what I hear the Father saying and doing'. Proclaiming the Kingdom of God by "Do'in the Stuff". The early church 'got' Jesus. John Wimber 're-got' Jesus and began proclaiming the Kingdom and demonstrating it as any loving son would of his Father. Now, we are no longer refuges but 'Bona Fide' citizens in good standing with our King and our new country. Where Love, Mercy, Grace; Peace 'rains' on us eternally here and now. 'The Already But Not Yet' (Ruis)."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

We face many crossroads in our lives. God wants us to be that beacon of faith to those around us. He shows us his love like a rainbow on a sunrise. He helps lift us up when we fall. For our stay in this world is just a short time. A pass over from here to his loving arms. Like the morning star, he will guide us along our way. — Phil Mitchell

God uses means. Natural laws and human ingenuity are his tools, even when we do not see his hand. He didn't just establish these laws and then step away. As contemporary science reminds us, apparent chaos is ubiquitous. Things should fall apart, but they don't. Not for one moment could the cosmos sustain itself apart from the Father's loving word, which he speaks in his Son and by his Spirit. — Michael S. Horton

The concept of God as a loving, all-powerful person, who created us, who has a plan for us, who issues commandments, and who is ready to receive us into Heaven, is a substantial concept, rich in meaning and significance for human life. But if we take away all this, and leave only the idea of an original cause, it is questionable whether the same word should even be used. By keeping the original word, we delude ourselves into thinking that we are talking about the same thing. — James Rachels

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don't live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I'm tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn't an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn't likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see. — Jim Cymbala

The most rapturous delights you have ever had - in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace - are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ's redemption of us from evil and death. — Timothy Keller

We will die soon; and still our "hope is from him." May we not expect that when we face illness He will send angels to carry us to His bosom? We believe that when the pulse is faint and the heart is weak, some angelic messenger shall stand and look with loving eyes upon us and whisper, "Come away!" As we approach the heavenly gate, we expect to hear the welcome invitation, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."1 We are expecting harps of gold and crowns of glory; we are hoping soon to be among the company of shining ones before the throne; we are looking forward and longing for the time when we shall be like our glorious Lord - for "We shall see him as he is."2 Then if these are your hopes, O my soul, live for God; live with the desire and resolve to glorify Him from whose grace in your election, redemption, and calling you safely "hope" for the coming glory. — Anonymous

Loving God and people sets us free from the it's all about me syndrome — Sunday Adelaja

Remember again the principle: We will never be over those things that God has set under us until we learn to be under those things that God has placed over us. There is strength through surrender. Are you under the Word of God? Is the Bible your mandate for life? Are you loving it, reading it, obeying it, and living it? Are you consciously filled with the Holy Spirit? Have you yielded every part of the temple of your body to him? Are you grieving him in any way? Are you graciously submitting to those human authorities that God has set over you: in the home, in the church, in civil government, and in the workplace? Have you made Jesus Christ the absolute Lord over everything in your life? — Adrian Rogers

True love of others, according to Jesus, flows out of a love of God. The service of our lives flow out of the loving relationship we have with God. Too often we desire our service to create a loving relationship with God. Yet God does not seek after us because of any good deeds we have done. — Tyler Braun

Without loving and caring for others, most of us stand little chance of communing with God/the Divine Wisdom, no matter how many years we may spend in silent prayer. — Bo Lozoff

Jesus does not cherish an offense, loving us as well after the offense as before it. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

And if we ask how are we to know where our hearts are, the answer is just as simple - everything which hinders us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure, and the place where our heart is. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And above all, what a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people's damnation - just like the workers hired in the first hour. That is very human, but the Lord's parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because THAT kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.
-What It Means To Be A Christian — Pope Benedict XVI

Spiritual love, derived from Love-Intelligence, is nonconditional, nonpersonal benevolence. It is the love of being loving, with no strings attached, just for the sake of being what God wants us to be. — Thomas Hora

God's Love EXPLANATION: Just as Hosea went after his unfaithful wife to bring her back, so the Lord pursues us with his love. His love is tender, loyal, unchanging, and undying. No matter what, God still loves us. IMPORTANCE: Have you forgotten God and become disloyal to him? Don't let prosperity diminish your love for him or let success blind you to your need for his love. Restoration EXPLANATION: Although God will discipline his people for sin, he encourages and restores those who have repented. True repentance opens the way to a new beginning. God forgives and restores. IMPORTANCE: There is still hope for those who turn back to God. No loyalty, achievement, or honor can be compared to loving him. Turn to the Lord while the offer is still good. No matter how far you have strayed, God is willing to forgive you. — Anonymous

The Word says God don't give us credit for lovin the folks we want to love anyway. No, He gives us credit for loving the unlovable. The perfect love of God don't come with no conditions ... — Ron Hall

God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a "first" love, an unlimited, unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Children provide us with a necessary gut check. They challenge the distorted value systems that inhibit us from loving well. They are God-given reminders of life as it's meant to be. Don't hinder the little children. Let them come to me. Jesus sweeping children up into his embrace is also an invitation - no, a command - to welcome them into ours as well. The children will be the better for it. And so will we. — Scott Sauls

We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us ... The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving. — J.I. Packer

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, "Christ's love compels us" (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I'd tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother's beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this. — Gregory A. Boyd

It is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realize His will for us. And if we truly trust God, why not yield to His loving omniscience? After all, He knows us and our possibilities much better than do we. — Neal A. Maxwell

As I come to understand the many talents and characteristics of women, I realize how needed their strengths are in this dispensation. We must remember that we are daughters of God here to provide nurturing care for one another, family and friends--loving care to soften the changes of life felt by all.

What a great opportunity we have to fill our God-given role. He has given us the privilege to shape the lives of those entrusted to our care. Even those of us who have not been blessed to have children of our own can still be influential as trainers and nurturers. It does not matter where we live, whether we are rich or poor, whether our family is large or small. Each of us can share that Christ-like love in our "motherly ministry. — Barbara W. Winder

God doesn't call us to mediocrity. He calls us to a greater standard that doesn't teach us to tear people down to reach him, but to lift others up. Be the type of person that when people walk away from you, they know who you represent! — Shannon L. Alder

Be there ... care ... and put your children first in your life. When you are given the awesome responsibility of being a father, that is the most important responsibility you can have. God wants us to have a loving relationship with our kids and help them grow ... just like God's relationship with us. — John Harbaugh

Life isn't so much that we are seeking God (whether earnestly, sporadically, desperately, or not at all), but rather that God is already here with a steady lamp in the dark, searching for us. Life isn't how we stumble about trying to do no harm while we make occasional, feeble lurches at loving one another. Life is what God is doing within us and among us, nonstop-and it's not a death march, it's a dance. Life is about hearing this music and getting in step. — Marilyn Lacey

Why are we here? Why didn't God just make us and place us in Heaven? What is this place called Earth we're sent to reside in until we're called to live in Heaven for eternity? Training Camp Earth...it is the reason we're here. It is simply a training camp of lesson after lesson to build strength and our relationship with God before we go home. What lesson is God working on in your life today? — Kimberly Loving Ross

I am definitely questioning the atonement and trying to discover how we can see it in a different way. We've got this image of God who needs some sort of flesh, some sort of blood, that needs some sort of vengeance to pay for sin. My experience of a loving God who's asked me to love my enemies - this isn't a God that demands something before you are accepted. I think Jesus died because Jesus was inclusive. God is inclusive. I think that the idea of God somehow being separated from us was more man's idea. — Jay Bakker

Since God is the end of man, since he has created us to be perfect and happy in him, it is manifest that if the designs of creation have not here below been entirely frustrated, there should be found men who tend to their end in seeking and loving God. And nevertheless, because of human liberty, there should also be found other men who neglect God, their principle and their end, and yield to the seduction of created things. Such indeed is the spectacle which the history of the world unceasingly presents to us. — Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

We need to pray for our nation like never before, and then put legs to our prayers and preach the gospel to a sin-loving and Hell-bound world. To pray for America and at the same time ignore that command to preach the gospel to every creature, is nothing but empty hypocrisy. It is to honor God with our lips and have cold hearts that are far from Him. May He give us a love that moves us from the pews into the streets, and from our homes into our universities. God save us from the cozy comfort of lukewarm contemporary Christianity. — Ray Comfort

The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us Each time you let the love of God penetrate deeper into your heart it leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give whole-hearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge we can lead a loving life. — Henri Nouwen

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. JOHN 1:16 JUNE 14 Health and prosperity can be yours. I realize that you may regard this as a very extravagant assertion - a big order, so to speak; but please remember that I do not make this assertion on my own authority. I have this on the authority of the wisest Book ever written. The Bible isn't as fearful of promising big things as some of the more timid, halfhearted preachers of the gospel. The Bible makes superlative promises, because its promises are inspired by a loving and omnipotent God. But the Bible is also very subtle. And it points out that the blessings of health and prosperity are not easily given or easily received. Parenthetically, I want to say that by prosperity, the Bible does not mean merely material affluence; it means to enter abundantly into the blessings of God's grace. And it tells us that health and prosperity come to us when our soul is in harmony with — Norman Vincent Peale

It is a terrible smudge on grace and unconditional love to think that God simply winks and smiles at our poor choices; that God must rubber stamp everything we do or else He is unloving. God loves us unconditionally regardless of our performance - good or bad. When God challenges us or corrects us He does not stop loving us. In the safety of His love we can receive correction and challenge without shame or feelings of rejection. — Michael M. Rose

Commandments are loving counsel from a wise Father. Our understanding and concept of God as a loving and personal Heavenly Father allows us no other definition. He gives us commandments for one reason only-because he loves us and wants us to be happy. — Paul H. Dunn

We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one. — Malala Yousafzai

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. JOHN 15:12 Dear Jesus, help me to love others the way that You do. I know that You love them unconditionally, no matter how they act or what they have done. I find it hard to always do that. You have commanded us to love You and love others, but I find it far easier to love You than I do to love them. Other people fail me and You never do. Other people can be unloving and You never are. That's why I need Your love to fill my heart every day. Thank You that You are the God of love - You don't just have love, You are love. I pray that Your Spirit of love in me will flow out of me to others like a river. Enable me to show love even to those who are hard to love. Teach me how to be loving to others in a consistent and unfailing way. Enable me to be the kind of person people are attracted to because of Your love in me. In Jesus' name — Stormie O'martian

It is for people we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children we are exacting and would rather see. them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records that though He has often rebuded us, condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexcusable sense. — C.S. Lewis

But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer. — Nicholas Wolterstorff

If we are talking about a loving God, we are talking about a God who asks us to trust him, whether we get what we ask for or don't. But he will never force us to trust him. That is entirely up to us. We have free will and we can accept his love or reject it, or claim it doesn't exist at all. We can trust him or distrust him as we like. But if he really and truly is the God of the Bible, who loves me with an unchanging and self-sacrificial love (agape), then I really and truly can trust him in all circumstances, which is tremendously freeing. In fact, I can go one step further than trusting him. To use a biblical phrase, I can rejoice in him. But is only possible if we really do know that God has our best interests at heart at all times. Of course, we have to decide on our own whether we believe that. But if we come to see that, that is true and do allow ourselves to believe it, we are precisely where he created us to be: in his loving hands. — Eric Metaxas