Deserve

"I'll stop this pretending that I can somehow deserve what I already have." -Barlow Girl

Good evening. That lyric up above is from a song that I hear often, yet yesterday on our way home from Tennessee, I really paid attention to it. I pretend all the time that I can deserve God's love. Not out in public, of course. But in my devotional time....in my prayer time...my one-on-one time with my All Sufficient Father and Redeemer, I pretend that I can deserve His love. Like I can do enough, or say enough...or spend enough time with Him.
But I can't. The truth is, we don't deserve His love. Not in the slightest bit. We are evil to our core. Born into sin. Master manipulators and justifiers of wrongs. We don't even deserve to ponder His greatness! Yet, here we are. His creation. Made for His glory. And He loves us. Oh how He loves us! So dearly, and so entirely. He will never leave nor forsake us. He loves us more than we can ever understand. What we do understand of His love is overwhelming. Crushing. And I hunger for more of Him...and I hunger to learn how to love Him more.
Friends, we don't deserve His love. But He pours it out on us anyways. I need to learn to accept it, cherish it, and love Him more rather than 'doing' to 'gain His love.' Oh how perfect He is. How perfect I'm not! And He loves me anyways. Praise God!