I’m growing in wonder at the love of God.

Recently, I’ve been listening to Scripture before I fall asleep (I use the Dwell Bible app and highly recommend it). As I listened to Psalm 139 a couple of nights ago, verse sixteen stood out to me. There, David writes,

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:16

David expresses wonder at the fact that God knew all his days before any of them came to pass. And what is true for David is true for us as well. Before we came to be, God knew us, knew who we would become, knew where we would go.

But God also knew our sins, our weaknesses, and rebellions. He knew our stubbornness, our failures, our unfaithfulness. God knew it all before he formed us.

I’ve spent much of my time at home discouraged and afraid, painfully aware of my inadequacies. I’ve long affirmed the truth that nothing good dwells in me, that I need the Lord; I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that truth with such desperation as I do now. Sometimes it takes pain to shatter our assumptions of self-sufficiency. Sometimes it takes an external shift to turn our attention to the ways our internal focus is off, to show us the strength of sin in our flesh.

According to Psalm 139:16, however, God knew all of that, our failures and faithlessness and fickle hearts, and he still loved us. He understood the situation far better than we do, that we were enemies of a holy God, and he still sent his son to give us life (Romans 5:6-8). He saw all the ways we would rebel, all the ways we would prove ourselves to be unlovable, and still he loved us with a steadfast love that cannot be shaken.

God knows me, yet he loves me. God knows you, yet he loves you. He loves not because we warrant it but because love is his nature. He is its source. “God is love,” John writes (1 John 4:8, 16). And his love is an enduring love. He saves us, sanctifies us, and will see us through to the end (Philippians 1:6). So we can come to him, inadequate as we are, and find strength in his power. His grace is sufficient for us (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). We may rest in his love, worship him out of love, and love our neighbors and our enemies because of his love. His love changes everything.

Photo by Spencer Watson on Unsplash