Remember That You Are Loved

The Way Back to Abiding … Part 2

When doing for God begins to replace being with God

I had asked God for direction, and instead He had shown me where I had drifted. Through the prophet Jeremiah, I had been led straight to repentance.

So I asked again.

What should I read?

Song of Songs.

This time, the choice carried history.

A Book I Once Avoided

For much of my earlier life, Song of Songs was not a book I particularly wanted to read.

I didn't understand it. Like Proverbs 31, some of its verses had been used in ways that wounded rather than encouraged me.

So I mostly stayed away from these texts.

Rejection had been a stronghold in my thinking for much of my life. There were roots that went back farther than I could remember and experiences throughout my life that seemed to reinforce the same message:

You aren't wanted.

You aren't enough.

Even Scripture became tangled up in it.

Proverbs 31, in particular, was often presented to me less as a beautiful picture of wisdom and more as a measuring stick showing me everything I wasn't. During difficult years in my marriage, its words became another list of ways I supposedly failed to measure up as a godly woman.

Much of that has been healed. God has done tremendous work in me surrounding rejection and identity. But for a long time there was a question underneath it all:

If I couldn't be a godly woman in the eyes of the man who knew me best, how could I possibly be pleasing to God?

That history matters because it explains why receiving the love of God—not merely believing intellectually that He loved me—became such an important part of my journey.

That changed several years ago during a fast.

I remember praying something bold:

“Lord, give me all the love You have for me.”

What I sensed in response was:

If I did, it would overwhelm you. You aren't able to receive it.

That began another journey.

My prayer changed:

Teach me how to receive more.

Over time, part of that journey included studying Song of Songs verse by verse.

For that study I used The Passion Translation along with The Sacred Journey by Brian and Candice Simmons. I know The Passion Translation is highly interpretive and has been the subject of considerable debate. I'm not interested in entering that debate here. It was the translation I used in that season as I asked God to teach me how to receive His love more fully.

I wasn't looking for new doctrine. I was learning to receive in my heart a truth already established throughout Scripture:

God loves me.

Song of Songs is, at its foundation, biblical love poetry. Christians throughout church history have also seen in its imagery reflections of God's covenant love and, particularly, Christ's love for His bride.

I began reading it devotionally in that way—not denying its original setting, but allowing its language of delight, desire and belonging to challenge something in me.

Could I really believe that God didn't merely tolerate me?

Could I believe that I was loved?

After Repentance Came Love

So here I was again.

The day after Jeremiah.

I reread all eight chapters of Song of Songs.

And something from that earlier season returned:

I am loved.

Not because I had performed well.

Not because I had completed enough assignments.

Not because I had prayed enough hours, written enough blogs, given enough money or gone enough places.

Loved because love begins with Him.

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Paul prayed that believers would somehow grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is—and then acknowledged that this love “surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19).

In other words, there is more love than I presently know how to comprehend.

Maybe my prayer from years ago wasn't so strange after all.

Teach me to receive more.

I AM LOVED

As I sat with Song of Songs, I wrote:

He holds me close.

He dances with me.

He gazes upon me.

I am loved.

And then I wrote it again:

I AM LOVED!

It was fresh revelation of an old truth.

Not new theology.

Not something God had suddenly decided about me.

Something Scripture had been telling me all along that my heart still needed to learn how to receive.

One phrase in the translation I was reading stopped me:

“I am the one who brings him bliss.”

Bliss?

I looked it up.

Complete and supreme happiness.

Utter joy.

Total contentment.

Who would ever think that about themselves?

Certainly not the woman who had spent so many years wondering whether she measured up.

I wasn't building theology from the definition of one English word. Something much more personal was happening.

I was confronting how difficult it still was for me to believe that God could genuinely take pleasure in me the day after leading me to repentance.

Scripture had already been teaching me that truth. 

On my birthday, he had written sweet words on my heart reminding me that:

He delights in me.

And Scripture gives me solid ground beneath that truth. Zephaniah 3:17 describes God rejoicing over His people with gladness. Psalm 147:11 says the Lord delights in those who fear Him and put their hope in His unfailing love.

This wasn't about convincing myself that God approves of everything I do.

Jeremiah had taken care of that misconception the day before.

God can delight in me and still correct me.

I can be deeply loved and still need to repent.

In fact, His correction is evidence that I am not rejected. Hebrews 12 teaches that His discipline is evidence that I belong to Him.

The God who confronted me yesterday was not less loving than the God who reminded me of love today.

It was the same God.

Still No Answer

And yet there was something slightly frustrating about this beautiful morning.

I still wanted an answer.

Where am I going?

What am I doing?

What is next?

Nothing.

Silence.

I had repented.

I had returned.

Now I had sat in His love.

Surely we could move on to the assignment.

Apparently not.

God was doing something I wasn't yet recognizing.

I wanted Him to restore the communication so I could get my instructions.

Perhaps He wanted to restore the relationship because He wanted me.

No objective.

No five-step plan.

No next destination.

Just an invitation to sit in a truth I had spent years learning to receive:

You are loved.

And maybe before I can properly carry whatever comes next, I need to remember that my value has absolutely nothing to do with whether another assignment comes at all.