Relationship With God Who Loves You

 

My hope and prayer for writing the N.E.W. LIFE Seed blog is that it will edify the Church, help ready the Bride of Christ for His return, and glorify God.  I pray that what I share will help the Church to be spiritually, emotionally and physically healthy and help those who struggle with unhealthy food behaviors to trade their relationship with food with the incomparably more satisfying relationship with God and invite unbelievers into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. 

What does the Bible say about God’s relationship to the believer?  It is a relationship of unfathomable love by God towards His children:

 

It is a kind, everlasting love:

"The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.'"  

Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV)

 

It is a lavish love:

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

1 John 3:1a-b (NIV)

 

He pours His love into our hearts:

". . . because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."  

Romans 5:5 (NIV)

 

It is an unbelievably sacrificial, merciful and graceful love:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

John 3:16 (NIV)

 

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."  

John 15:13 (NIV)

 

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  

Romans 5:8 (NIV)

 

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved."

Ephesians 2:4-5 (NIV)

 

It is an inseparable love:

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  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."  

Romans 8:37-39 (NIV)

 

It is a very present, personal love:

"Jesus answered and said to him, 'If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.'"  

John 14:23 (NKJV)

 

It is an initiated, selfless, unearned love:

"We love because he first loved us."  

1 John 4:19 (NIV)

 

It is a knowable, abiding love:

"If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."  

1 John 4:15-16 (NIV)

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.  And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me.  Because I live, you will live also.  At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.  He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.  And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

John 14:15-21 (NKJV)

 

Prayer for the reader:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  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.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!  Amen."

Ephesians 3:14-21 (NIV)

 

The first step in replacing an out-of-balance (or idolatrous) relationship with food with the incomparably more satisfying relationship with God is to understand how much God loves you and wants relationship with you.  Read God’s Word regularly to grow in understanding His great Love for you.

 

God wrote a LOVE letter to you—the Bible.  Have you read it?

 

For more encouragement you can check out the N.E.W. LIFE e-book which includes further support, the N.E.W. LIFE Eating Plan and additional nutrition information.

Your Christian dietitian and friend in Christ,

Diane