“The simple statement ‘God is love,” has far-reaching implications the minute we begin to live our lives based on that statement. When God who has created me is love and only love, I am loved before any human being loved me.  When I was a small child I kept asking my father and mother: ‘Do you love me?’ I asked that question so often and so persistently that it became a source of irritation to my parents. For even though they assured me hundreds of times that they loved me I never seemed fully satisfied with their answers and kept on asking the same question.  Now, many years later, I realize I wanted a response they couldn’t give.  I wanted them to love me with an everlasting love. I know that this was the case because my question, ‘Do you love me?’ was always accompanied by the question, ‘Do I have to die?’  Somehow, I must have known  that if my parents would love me with a total, unlimited, unconditional love, I would never die.” (Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, p. 78).

The love of God truly is the answer to every question and every concern in life.  When my father died in 1987 I felt a little displaced.  When my mother died years later, even though I had grown children of my own, there was a part of me that felt like an orphan who would no longer have a place to go if the foundations of my world ever collapsed.  I think most of us feel like orphans at some time in our life: alone, unsupported, insignificant and uncared for.  The very things that we grasp at for meaning, security, and protection as “orphans” often drive love away.  Control, a need to always be right, material possessions, distrust, anger, and the capacity to be often and easily offended all seem right to us because we feel alone and vulnerable in a hostile world.

Our greatest need is the security that only unconditional love can provide but people do not have the capacity to provide that love day in and day out and besides we often have to watch the ones we do love fade away and die.  The only solution is an unconditional love that never dies.  Our Father in heaven is the only solution.  It is his love that we long for.  It is a powerful love that says, “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.”  Our problem is that most of us have a very difficult time accepting and receiving that love. We don’t feel worthy and we don’t feel that anyone could love an unworthy person to that degree.  It is, however, the entire message of the cross.  It is God standing and screaming that he loved us when we did not love him or give him a second thought and he loved us enough to die for us.

That is the essential truth and the only one that can override my orphan spirit so that I can rest in the love and care of a father who will never fade or die.  My experience, however, is that such a truth cannot be learned but must be revealed by the Spirit to my heart and experienced in some profound, supernatural way to get past all of my preset perspectives and beliefs about life, in general, and myself in particular.

Any approach to God on a purely intellectual level will fail to breach all the barriers my heart has erected through the years.  I need an experiential touch from God to override my fears and my past. I need to hear his voice.  I need to feel his presence.  I need to see him work a miracle in my life.  I need him to overpower the devil who has tormented me. I need his provision when I believed all was lost. I need to feel his touch when I believed I was untouchable.  I reject the notion that seeking an experience with God is somehow less than believing Bible facts or opens us up to deception.  I believe seeking an experience with God is the testimony of scripture that  this search should be the primary pursuit of every man.  God is willing.  What Father does not want to speak to his child personally, hug them, rescue them from danger, or put food on the table for them as daily bread?

Let me encourage you to seek God not just knowledge about God.  Ask for an experience.  Ask for a miracle.  Ask to be used in supernatural ways to bless others. When we experience him we come to know him.  When we come to know him we come to know his love – a love that never dies.  Ultimately, we come to know we are not orphans and that we will never die because his love will never die.  Be blessed today by seeking your experience with God.