Secure In God’s Love - Paul

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.

Romans 8:38

A man greeted a good friend on the street outside his favorite coffee shop one day with the obligatory, “How’re you doing, Phil?” Before his visit with this friend had ended, he probably wished he had never asked.

“Well,” Phil began, “my wife and I aren’t getting along, my kids have been getting in trouble, I lost my job last week, and the mortgage is due tomorrow. I have a toothache that’s killing me, and this being summer and all, I’ve got a heat rash about the size of Rhode Island on my behind. But you know me! I can’t complain!”

When a man goes through difficult times, he may be tempted to think, Somebody up there must really hate me!

Some have a misguided idea of the relationship between difficulties and God’s love. They believe, perhaps unconsciously, that when times get tough, it’s because God is angry with them or just doesn’t care anymore.

The apostle Paul opposed such thinking. He had endured suffering that most believers in the early twenty-first century can’t begin to imagine, yet he never saw his suffering as an occasion to doubt God’s love for him.

Paul posed this question to the believers in Rome: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?” (Romans 8:35).

The answer is a resounding no! “Despite all these things,” Paul wrote, “overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Paul learned the truth of God’s love firsthand. He came to understand that whatever we may have to endure, we can rest in the realization that Jesus still loves us.

Everyone goes through difficulties, sometimes serious ones. As a child of God, you never have to see your problems as evidence that God loves you any less. You can always rest secure in God’s love, knowing that he promises to be with you through anything you have to endure.