You're Convinced You Love Him — But Do You Believe He Loves You?

Let me ask you something, and I want you to be honest with yourself. If someone told you right now that you didn't love God — you would push back hard. "Yes I do. With everything in me. Of course I love God."

But if someone told you God didn't love you — what would your gut response be? For a lot of people, it would be: "I know. I know what I've done. How could He?"

That is the exact reverse of reality. And it is the lie that has kept more people miserable, stuck, and unable to receive from God than almost anything else. You can't love Him unless He first loved you. Your love for Him is not the starting point. His love for you is.

The most miserable people I know are convinced they love God but doubt He loves them.

I've dealt with thousands of people over the course of ministry, and I've seen this pattern over and over. They are passionate about God. They are committed, faithful, showing up. And they are utterly miserable — because they are pouring love into a relationship where they don't believe it's being returned.

I know that experience personally. For a large portion of my life, even while in ministry, I was miserable because I looked more at what I had done wrong than at what He had done right. I was convinced I loved God. I was not convinced He loved me.

And here's what I want you to see. The Word addresses this directly:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.

1 John 4:18–19 (NKJV)

Read that last sentence again: "We love Him because He first loved us." Not — we loved Him and He loved us back. Not — we initiated this and He responded. He loved first. That love of His is what produced your love for Him.

Your love for God is not the starting point of this relationship. It is the evidence that His love got there first.

If you love Him — you have just proven He loves you.

This is where it gets powerful. If you can look at me and say, "I love God" — you have just given me irrefutable proof that God loves you.

Because you can't. You don't have the ability on your own to generate that love. It doesn't originate in you. The fact that love for God exists in your heart is the direct result of His love being poured into your life first.

So when someone sits across from me, convinced they love God but certain He couldn't possibly love them after everything they've done — I want to tell them: you've got it completely reversed. You should actually be more certain of His love for you than of yours for Him, because His came first.

That passion you have for Him? That desire to know Him? The fact that you're reading this right now? That is His love for you on display. You didn't start this. He did.

Making a deal with God to stay small is not humility — it's unbelief.

I want to share something personal that I've never been particularly proud of, but I think you need to hear it.

There was a season in my life when I was in sin — and I was doing it intentionally. Not to turn my back on God completely, but because I was trying to sin just enough that He couldn't use me on a large level. I thought if I stayed small enough, stayed messy enough, I could avoid the calling on my life without fully walking away.

I was in a hotel room in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had a major headache, and my neck was in bad shape. And my spirit was saying, "Just ask the Father for help." But I wouldn't. I told myself it was because I didn't want to be a hypocrite. In reality, I was afraid that if I asked Him for help, I'd be obligated to do what He was asking me to do.

And then — without me asking — the power of God hit me in my feet, came up through my body, and out the top of my head, taking every bit of the pain with it. And my Father said to me: "Son, there is nothing that can keep Me from loving you. No matter how far you run, I'll still be right here waiting for you."

I didn't understand what that meant for years. But what it showed me was this: in that moment, I was convinced I loved God. I was absolutely not convinced He loved me. And yet His love showed up — uninvited, unprompted, unearned — because He loved me first.

Don't live the way I was living. I hurt myself. I hurt people around me. I'm not sharing this to give you a license — I'm sharing it because the truth in that hotel room is the truth for you right now: He is still right there. His love did not require your goodness to show up.

His love never required a deal — and it doesn't require one now.

There are people who have been trying to negotiate their way into or out of God's love for years. Trying to sin enough to stay under the radar. Trying to be good enough to deserve it. Trying to make deals — "If You help me, I'll serve You. If You heal me, I'll tell everyone."

And all of it misses the same point: He didn't love you because of what you would offer. He loved you before you had anything to offer. Romans 5:8 makes it clear — while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not after we cleaned up. Not in exchange for a promise. While we were still in it.

God does not join you in your sin. He loves you too much for that. If a friend told me he was going to rob a bank and asked me to come along, I'd refuse — not because I stopped loving him, but because I do love him. Love doesn't participate in what destroys you. Love stays on the right path so it's still standing when you need it most.

His refusal to go along with what harms you is not evidence that He doesn't love you. It is evidence that He does.

You need to be persuaded — and that takes sustained effort.

Paul said he was persuaded. That word means steady, sustained effort. He didn't receive this in a moment. He had to work his way into it — Scripture by Scripture, day by day, until it became something he truly believed and not just something he knew.

That's what I'm asking you to do. Not to get God to love you — He already does. But to get yourself to accept and believe how much He loves you. We have to labor to enter into rest. And this labor is worth it, because on the other side of it is a life where faith is easy, where fear has no foothold, and where receiving from God is natural.

The fear you carry right now — that's the diagnostic. Perfect love casts out fear. Which means if fear is still present, the love hasn't fully landed yet. That's not condemnation. That's direction. Keep going. Keep feeding on this until the love gets bigger than the fear.

You are not too far gone. You are not too broken. You are not too late. His love got there before you did.

Your love for Him is not the measure of this relationship — His is.

I want to close with this, because I think it will set some people free.

Stop measuring this relationship by the quality of your love for Him. Your love is inconsistent. It has good days and bad days. There are days you feel close and days you feel miles away. Your love is not the foundation of this.

His love is. And His love doesn't have bad days. It doesn't fluctuate. It was fixed in place before you were born, demonstrated at the Cross, and it has not moved since.

The next time you feel far from Him — stop and remember: "I love God." And then let that be your proof. You love Him because He first loved you. Which means in this moment, even when you feel the furthest away, you are standing in the middle of the evidence that He never left.

He loved you first. He loves you still. And nothing you have done — or could do — changes that.

Get this down on the inside of you. Not just in your head — in your bones. Because when you truly believe it, everything changes. Your prayer life. Your faith. Your ability to receive. Your freedom from fear.

He loved you first. That's not theology. That's your story.

Fight To Win.