Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves You

God continues to answer my prayer for him to show me how he loves me.

Our church had a women’s retreat last Saturday which excited me and gave me so many great reminders.

First we need to settle it in our hearts and minds just how much God loves us. With that solid in our hearts, we can move on to have healthy relationships with others.

Then remember:

Everyone is constantly under attack by the devil.

Be careful about the expectations we place on people.

Most of what others say and do that we take personally is probably not about us at all.

Forgive other people the way we have been forgiven through Christ.

God has a plan for us to share his love and mercy and grace with others.

The speaker reminded us how important it is to meditate on God’s word, and I was encouraged to start memorizing Scripture again to help with this.

We discussed so many helpful verses, and I will share a few with you.

Ephesians 3:17-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Romans 8:38-39: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 3:1: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Zephaniah 3:17: The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Isaiah 30:18: Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

I want to begin by memorizing these verses. Once I have cemented the magnitude of what they say in my heart, I will be better able to relate to others.

I need to keep in mind that everyone is constantly under attack.

2 Corinthians 4:4: The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

John 10: 10: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

1 Peter 5:8: Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Revelation 12: 10: Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.

And with a kind and gentle heart, we can learn to love people the way God wants us to.

Ephesians 2: 10: For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 4:32: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Hebrews 12:15: See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

Philippians 2:3-4: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Hebrews 3:13: But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

Each of us who attended got a key to wear around our neck, to remind us of whatever the most important thing was we learned from that day.

When I touch mine, I think, “Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you.”