God Loves You

God Loves you, and you

Some days I am in awe at how much he cares for us and wants us to prosper. At the beginning of my walk, I was doing so many things trying to get God to love me. I read scriptures every single day, I did away with secular music and all forms of social media, I steered clear of spaces that were reminiscent of my past and I cut off everything and everyone that had the potential to lure me back to a life I so desperately wanted to escape from.

Yes, all of these things are good. It’s good to pursue God with your whole heart. It’s good to prioritize Him in all that you say and do. It’s not just good its whats required of every christian.

To bear the lords name means to live as a living, breathing, representative of the kingdom that will one day come near again.

However restraint without faith is tiresome, its grueling but most importantly it doesnt change ones heart.

The Apostle Paul said it best

“whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” – Romans 14:23

I wasn’t fleeing from things that were not of God because I trusted him, in fact it was quite the opposite. I did away with worldly things because I DIDN’T trust him at all. I didn’t believe he loved me enough to keep me. I was working extra hard to prove I was worthy of his love. The harder I worked meant the more he would love me, see me and if I worked diligently, without protest my salvation wouldn’t be in vain.

I was determined to earn my keep.

This desire to prove to God that I was worth what Jesus did on the cross left me angry, bitter, oftentimes confused and to be very blunt,

Miserable

Furthermore every time I was in a situation where restraint was required, I failed tremendously.

This would become an endless cycle of disappointment. There would be several months of me being a “Super Christian” lol (Gods little worker bee is what I like to call it) Church, studying, Reading, fleeing from all known evils, then out of exhaustion and in need of an escape from my self-imposed prison, I was back drinking, back in the club and back in the very spot, I swore I would never be in again.

wash, rinse, repeat

I started to grow angry at myself, then others, and finally God for my inability to be happy and content with my new life.

See God had given me peace, it didn’t take him long to show me why living without him was utter nonsense and all the makings of an early grave but I just couldn’t rationalize or better yet wrap my head around his love for me. I couldn’t understand why he loved me? How he could love me? and most importantly why was it …free?

The biggest pitfall in one’s walk with God is the idea that his love is to be earned. God loves us because its WHO HE is, its part of his divine nature and nothing can separate us from his love

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” 1John 3:1

I was a sinner of epic proportions (real spill lol), I also had witnessed so much trauma in my life that it affected the way I viewed God and our relationship.

See people, us humans, make folks work for our love. Societal love is often tied to what we do and how well we do it. People base love off of superficial and capitalistic means, how well you produce determines how much love, attention and affection you will receive and sadly we internalize this conditional type love making it the standard from which our value, dignity, and self-worth springs from.

However God is different. Gods love for us is eternal. Gods love for us has nothing to do with what we do. His love is tied to who HE is. We have intrinsic value because he made us. Everyone is valuable because they are made in his image “the imago dei”

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created them” – Genesis 1:27

In some shape or form we look like God. We have attributes that resemble him. That means our Value and Dignity is tied to who we come from , who were made for and who we bear the image of and what we do speaks to how much we believe this ever-present reality.

Listen, I am not saying that because God loves us we can say and do whatever we want. No, thats foolish. (some of our lives are the way they are because we dont know and/or refuse to acknowledge God) What I am saying is that when we accept Gods love, when we embrace what was done for us on the cross, when we stop relying on our own hands to free us, save us, and comfort us. We make room for a good God, to do what he does best, LOVE us, giving us what we need to not just maintain but to overcome.

The majority of our works is fear-based Thats the reality, restrictions and rules that remove what Jesus did on Calvary is servitude of a different kind

We become enslaved by our own hands.

So many people this world over are trying to earn their salvation. Instead of the Bible being a book inspired by the one that frees, it becomes nothing more than a book that echoes their own up bringing.

I turned God into a warlord. I stripped him of his love nature and made him into a merciless tryant. I acted as though he hated me and the only way to win his approval was by working myself to life

or on most days, to Death

Needless to say God was unimpressed with my works.

He wanted my heart

He wanted, better yet desired for me to see that my works couldnt compare to the work his son, my brother Jesus, already did.

Jesus died so that we may live and our REAL life begins when we put 100% of our trust and devotion into him. The moment we surrender and put our faith in Him, is the very moment when our hearts begin to shift, its when we realize that our works cannot save us because the ransom paid by Jesus is truly beyond our comprehension and much too large to bear.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast. – Ephesians 2:9

On June 2, 2024 I gave my life to Jesus (Lord knows I needed it) but on Decemeber 23, 2024 is when I surrendered my life to him.

Surrendering my way and will in exchange for his way and will has now allowed me to actually enjoy reading my scriptures lol. I enjoy going to church, volunteering my time and resources with the homeless and as of recent even sharing the Gospel. What felt like work is now a joyous response to HIS love and the work that was done on the cross for me,

You

Us All.

My heart is changing. My heart has changed.

God loves me.

He loved the broken Marisa so much he died for her and rose again before she even walked the earth, before my mother could write Marisa between the pages of her college-ruled notebook.

He loved the broken Marisa so much he came and got her, woke her up in the midst of her sin and sorrow

He loved the broken Marisa and loves the one made right through Jesus Christ reign, sacrifice and resurrection.

By his grace and mercy he went searching for his lost sheep, ME, in the face of the 99.

God loves me because well,

the Bible tells me so

“We love because he first loved us” – 1John 4:19

May we all begin to rest in the love that is Jesus Christ who was sent to die on a cross to reconcile the relationship between us and our Father

Our Father, The Holy one of Israel who loves, sees, and cares for us in every way.

amen

and amen

🕊️