God Loves You - Part 1: Knowing His Love

​What a simple title, huh? A simple title for a simple truth. However, while the truth that God loves us is so simple, most do not know it. Now they might claim to know it, but the truth is that the vast majority of God’s children truly don’t.
 
But this is just human nature to think we “know” something just because we have gathered the knowledge of that truth in our intellectual faculties. In fact, you will hear people moan and groan when you tell them to turn to a particular Scripture that they have heard many messages about. Why? It is because they think they understand all there is to know in that verse and because they want to hear something new and exciting. But if we ever get to the point where we are not excited or at least anticipating something that we maybe have heard before, then that is proof positive that we do not really “know” that Scripture the way the Bible speaks of knowing something.
 
Have you ever noticed that when a particular subject or truth is alive to you- that is, it has impacted your heart to where you have seen its light- that you get excited when you are about to hear another message on it? And why is that? It is because when you have come to truly know a truth, you do not want to hear it less; you want to hear it more!
 
So, if your response was- “Aw, man! I don’t want to hear such a simple message of God’s love for me! I already know He loves me!”- then you are exactly the person who needs to hear this. You need to open your heart and let the revelation come so that you too can become excited and full of joy at the wonder of God’s love.
 
So, I know most Christians will say, “Oh, I understand God loves us!” or “Sure, I know God loves me!” but just because one has mentally accented to this—meaning, they can acknowledge in their head that this is true—that doesn’t mean that they know it the way they should. And here’s the honest truth—there is no one reading this who cannot stand to grow in their knowledge & understanding of God’s love for them. That’s the fact, Jack!
 
No, what these Christians mean when they say that they already know God loves them is that they have just acknowledged that this is true in their head. In other words, they have the head knowledge of Scriptures that say that God loves us such as John 3:16, but the truths of those Scriptures have not truly impacted their hearts! This is what I am talking about—knowing something in your heart! This is when it impacts you.
 
And the Gospel in all of this is that when His love truly does impact your heart, it holds so many awesome benefits for you! 
 
In fact, in the time that I have been a born-again Christian, I have come to the conclusion that this one truth is the single greatest revelation that we could ever receive of and about God. The reason I can say that is because knowing in our hearts God’s great love for us will produce in us several other virtues.
 
Perhaps the most important is the ability to fulfill the Great Commandment. Let me explain …  
 
You see, through understanding that God loves us, we will be drawn into a more intimate communion with Him—thus fulfilling God’s primary purpose for our lives of knowing God and having a personal relationship with Him. And what this does is it propels us into fulfilling the Great Commandment which is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. How does this work, you ask? When we realize who He really is and that truth abides in our heart, it will make us want to love Him more in return.
 
On top of that, knowing His love will not only produce more of a love for Him, but it will also produce more of a love for others—thus fulfilling the second great commandment, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
 
You see, you cannot give away what you have not first received, and this applies to love as well. If you have not first received love, then you will have no love to give—not to God nor to God’s children. You must be filled with His love in order to pour that love out on others.
 
This is what First John 4:19 was saying when it said, “We love because He first loved us.” We are enabled to love when we are loved first. In other words, we can love (God and our neighbor) because (or, when we know) He first loved us.”  
 
But simply fulfilling the Great Commandment is not all that knowing His love does to us!
 
You see, when a person truly sees how much God loves them, there will be some profound changes in them. For one, it will be hard to wipe the smile off their face—for there will be joy unspeakable and full of glory in their life! Knowing God’s love will result in the ability to trust, believe, and receive from God better—because when you believe in your heart that He truly does love you, it’s difficult to not believe that He will do all that He said.
 
So in light of all these changes God’s love makes in our lives, it should be obvious then that most born again, Spirit-filled believers do not truly know God loves them much at all because look at their fruit! There is a lack of the fruit of the Spirit in most Christians, which is essentially the fruit of God’s love - love, joy, peace, faith, etc. There is also a lack of fulfilling the Great Commandment in most Christians because the majority don’t really love God the way He ought to be loved and they certainly don’t love their neighbors as themselves.
 
Church, I don’t say any of this to condemn, but simply to shed light on our need to know God’s love in a greater way—for it is absolutely the solution to this dilemma.   
 
However, like I said earlier, although God’s love for us is such a simple & powerful truth, there is the false notion in so many that they already know it. And again, that’s because we tend to equate knowing something with simply agreeing with something in our brains. Church, that is not exactly what the Bible means when it speaks of us “knowing” something—and this certainly applies to knowing God’s love.
 
So let’s look at a few verses today that talk about knowing God’s love so that we can learn what it means to truly know it the way God intends for us to.
 
Let’s start in First John 4:16 where the apostle John uses this terminology. In this verse, the apostle John says, “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and the who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

The word John used for “known” here comes from the Greek word ginosko which means more than just mentally acknowledging something is true. No, this word for “known” describes knowing something experientially and intimately. Church, we need to know God’s love for us like this—experientially and intimately.
 
In fact, this word is used in the Gospels of Matthew & Luke to describe something a little bit more “intimate” than the way we think of knowing something:
 
In Matthew 1:25, which just happens to be the first time ginosko is used in the New Testament, it was used to describe how Joseph did not “know” Mary until she had brought forth her firstborn Son, Jesus. (See Matthew 1:18-25). 
 
Now we know that this does not mean that Joseph didn’t know of her or did not get to know her during this time. No, I’m sure Joseph knew Mary very well, but this is obviously talking about having intimacy with her—thus the fact that she was a virgin.
 
We see the same thing said by Mary in Luke 1:34 when Gabriel visited her and told her about how God had chosen her to conceive & carry the Messiah. Her response to this news was “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
 
Now how many of you know that the way we use the word “know” today, she “knew” plenty of guys. But by using the word ginosko, we know she meant something entirely different. She was obviously talking about having physical relations with a man.
 
But do you see the point I’m making? Knowing God’s love is not just about knowing of something or even knowing it in some intellectual way. This “knowing” God’s love is intimately experiencing it.
 
Let me illustrate it like this: I see it like how we can know people on three different levels.
 
If I were to ask you if you knew Andrew Wommack, you know a lot of people would respond, yes. That’s because a lot of us have listened to his teachings, have seen him on television, been to his conferences, and some of us even have met him. But does that really mean that you know him? No, not really. It just means that you know of him—meaning, you’ve heard him speak, you know he lives in Colorado, and you know he loves to talk about God’s unconditional love.
 
So what are we saying when we say we “know” someone like that? We are saying that we know of them—that is, we know that they exist and who they are on a surface level.
 
But how many of you know that there are others who actually do know him? In fact, someone like myself or Pastor Robert who have actually talked with him and spent some time with him might actually “know” him. On top of that, he has some really close friends whom he’s known for years and spent a lot of time with who truly know him in a way that few do.
 
But guess who knows Andrew in a way that no one else does? His wife, Jamie! Jamie knows Andrew in a way that others do not and will not, because they enjoy a happy marriage together. Therefore, they have spent countless more hours together than even Andrew’s closest friends have, not to mention the intimacy they have shared through their union together.

Let me give another example of what I’m talking about that’s a little closer to home …
 
How many of you know that a lot of you would say, “I know Shannon,” but there’s a difference between how you know her and how I know her. And I am not just talking about the intimacy in our relationship; I’m also talking about how my “knowledge” of her even results in me knowing what she’s thinking a lot of times.
 
You see, because of the time I’ve spent with her, I “know” her at a much deeper, thorough, and intimate level than anyone else in here knows her, while you might say that you “know” her.
 
However, most of you in here know Shannon much more than you know Andrew Wommack because you’ve probably had multiple conversations with her and/or spent some time with her. But again, that’s different than the level of knowledge I have of Shannon.
 
This just illustrates how our knowledge of God’s love has levels. So just because you might know of the love of God (like you know of Andrew), that doesn’t mean you really know it. And just because you might know Shannon—having spent some time with her and have gotten to know her through your conversations with her—that doesn’t mean you know her like I do.  
 
You see, when it comes to God’s love, He wants us to move beyond the simple “Oh, I know that” kind of mentality to the “Yeah, I know that fairly well.” But His best is for us to move on to the level of knowledge, understanding, and intimacy that a husband & wife share. That’s what’s available to us with God’s love!
 
Now let’s look over at Ephesians chapter 3 and see what the apostle Paul had to say about knowing His love. In this chapter, we have a prayer that Paul prayed for this body of believers, and in this prayer we see how he focuses on them knowing God’s love for them.
 
In Ephesians 3:14-19, he prays, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
 
So after focusing on the strengthening of their inward man and Christ being at home in their hearts, Paul turns his attention to what he says is them “being rooted and grounded in love.” What this speaks of is how important it is that our roots go deep into, and our foundation is laid on, the love of God.
 
Church, it is so important that our life is founded on God’s love. So many base their lives on other things such as their works, obedience, and behavior, but that is a shoddy foundation. As the old hymn says, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking stand …”
 
But then the apostle goes on to say that when we are founded on His great love we “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height (of the love of Christ).” That means building our lives on His love “enables” us to comprehend all the dimensions of it.

Now the word “comprehend” literally describes “taking” something or “laying hold” of it. A better translation of this word might be “apprehend,” which is exactly what we are talking about—that it’s not good enough to “comprehend” His love; we need to “apprehend” it. In other words, we don’t just need to know it in our heads, but we need to capture it in our hearts. Amen!
 
But the thing we need to understand about Christ’s love is that we will never be able to fully apprehend it! And the reason for this is because of its height, width, length, and depth! In other words, it is so vast that it is going to take us all eternity to grasp it! It’s awesome and incomprehensible! This is why the apostle Paul said in Romans 8:35-39—  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 
You see, nothing can separate us from the love of God because of its immense dimensions. It’s higher, wider, longer, and deeper than anything! Amen! So, while we will never be able to exhaust it, what we can do is apprehend it little by little, ever increasing in Christ’s awesome love!
 
This is why Paul continued to pray for the church of Ephesus that they would know the love of Christ that passed knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). On the surface, that seems to be an impossible statement because how can you know something that passes knowledge? Well, the key to understanding this is to know the difference between these two words—“know” and “knowledge.”
 
The word Paul used for “knowledge” is the word gnosis, and this word describes knowing something generally. It actually means to know something thoroughly and have a good, overall understanding of it. So when Paul said that the love of Christ “passes knowledge,” he was simply saying that you’re never going to know it in and out. No, you won’t ever master it. You won’t ever exhaust all the knowledge there is of it.
 
However, Paul prayed that we still can come to “know” it. And this word for “know” describes what we talked about earlier – an experiential, intimate kind of knowing. And that’s what the Lord desires from us—that while we can never come to fully know His love, He invites us to experience it one bite at a time. This is why the Scriptures teach us to taste and see that the Lord is good! Amen!
 
You see, Paul understood that the love of God can only be truly known by revelation so that is why he prayed this for the Ephesian saints. And church, here is the good news for any of us who “know” we need to “know” God’s love more—we have a Holy Spirit inspired prayer right here in Ephesians chapter 3 that is God’s perfect will for us. Amen?
 
You see, in all of Paul’s prayers (Eph. 1:15-23, 3:14-21, Phil. 1:9-11, Col. 1:9-12, 1 Thess. 3:10-13, 2 Thess. 2:16-17, etc.) we discover God’s will for us because each prayer was inspired by God (Second Timothy 3:16). So when First John 5:14-15 states that we know if we pray anything according to His will that we know we have the answers to those prayers, then we can pray these prayers for others and for ourselves and expect God to perform them! Therefore, these Pauline prayers are “cheat codes” for praying & receiving God’s will in our lives! Amen!
 
So, as we go through this series entitled “God loves you!” I want us to pray this prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 over ourselves and expect God to bring us to “know” more and more of His great love for us. Yes, let’s embark on a journey to turn this head knowledge into revelation knowledge so that this truth of God’s love for us impacts our hearts the way it should. Amen?