Not Believing God's Love Is Costing You More Than You Know

Growing up, I didn't have a father who loved me. So when I'd hear preachers say, "God's love is like a father's love," my gut response was: I hope not. That would be terrible.

I don't carry that weight around anymore. My identity isn't rooted in what my earthly father did or didn't give me — it's rooted in what Jesus has said about me. But getting there required more than knowing God loved me. It required actually believing it.

And that shift — from knowing to believing — is what changes everything.

You can't operate on a love you only know about.

There's a simple test for whether you've moved from knowing to believing the love of God: has it affected you? Has it changed the way you think, the way you pray, the way you see yourself?

Because knowing about the love of God without believing it is like having a weapon you don't know how to use. It's right there. The means to victory is in your hands. But if you haven't learned to operate it, it won't do you any good when you need it most.

Don't wait until you're standing at a tomb to find out which side of that line you're on. That's not the moment to discover the gap between knowing and believing. You fix that before the pressure comes.

Not believing the love of God opens the door to false doctrine.

Here's where this gets serious. I want to make a point that is worth sitting with: when you don't believe the love of God, you become vulnerable to lies about him. Not believing his love doesn't just affect your prayer life — it distorts your entire picture of who God is.

Jesus himself laid the foundation for this in Luke 11:

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

Luke 11:11–13 (NKJV)

The argument is simple and devastating: even broken, imperfect, sinful human fathers know better than to harm their children when they come asking for help. So why would anyone believe God would do less?

Because they don't believe His love.

Be careful what you tell a baby Christian about asking God for things.

I once had a well-meaning believer warn me — in a faith church, no less — never to pray for patience. The logic? You have no idea what God will put you through to give it to you.

That kind of teaching does real damage. It makes a new believer afraid to bring their honest needs to their Father. It turns prayer into a minefield. Maybe I shouldn't ask for this. I don't know what price I'll have to pay.

The truth? Patience is already on the inside of every believer — it's a fruit of the Spirit. The issue isn't asking God to give you something you don't have. It's learning to yield to what's already there.

But the deeper issue is this: nobody who truly believed how much God loved them would be afraid to ask him for something. That fear is a symptom. It tells you exactly where someone's faith in God's love actually stands.

God did not give your loved one cancer to teach them something.

Now here's the harder conversation. Because this one has driven people away from God entirely.

The idea that God puts sickness on people to bring them closer to him, to teach them something, to fulfill some mysterious higher purpose — I'll call it what it is: a lie.

Think about the logic Jesus uses. You are imperfect. You are, compared to God, evil. And yet — if your child came to you sick, running a fever, scared, asking for help — would you have gone down to the CDC and given them that sickness on purpose? To draw them closer? To teach them a lesson?

Of course not. That would be monstrous. You'd be arrested.

So how does the same logic not apply to God? You, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your heavenly Father?

And in case anyone wants to argue from God's "infinite wisdom" — the Bible already settled this. Deuteronomy 28:61 says every sickness and every disease falls under the curse of the law. That's not my opinion. That's God's own Word. And when Jesus came, He redeemed us from the curse of the law — every sickness, every disease — because He became a curse for us.

Jesus is the express image of the Father. Show me where he made someone sick.

Here's the final argument — and it's airtight. Hebrews tells us Jesus is the express image of the Father. If you want to know what the Father is like, you look at Jesus.

So find it. Find the chapter and verse where Jesus looked at a sick person and said, "I'm giving you this disease to teach you something. To bring you closer to God." Search Matthew. Search Mark. Search Luke and John and Acts.

It's not there. It never happened. Jesus healed. He didn't harm.

What He did do — every time, without exception — was put tools in people's hands. He moved toward the need. He responded to faith. He met people where they were and lifted them out.

That is the Father. And that is the love of God that you need to know — and believe.

People are running from God because of what we've said about Him.

This may be the most sobering part of all. There are people who have completely rejected the Lord because someone told them God was responsible for their loss. That He took their child, their spouse, their parent. That somehow, in His infinite wisdom, He decided the most loving thing he could do was kill someone they loved.

And now they want nothing to do with Him. And we can't figure out why.

The answer is not complicated. We lied about Him. We made Him sound like a father who would hand his child a stone when they asked for bread. And they believed us.

This is why not believing the love of God isn't just a personal faith issue. It spreads. It distorts. It drives people away from the one person who could actually help them.

Stay in the Word. Let it build in you a picture of who God actually is — not the caricature, not the ogre, not the mysterious deity who might harm you if you ask for the wrong thing. The real one. The one who is so in love with you that the thought of harming you would never even enter His mind.

When you know that — when you believe that — it will change the way you pray, the way you live, and the way you represent Him to the world.

Fight To Win.