Does exhaustion ever hit you so hard that you fall asleep in the most outrageous places? Recently I had blocked out an afternoon to write, but I dozed off at my computer. Minutes later I abruptly awoke to discover eight pages of the letter “t.” Hardly my best writing to say the least. I needed a real nap. So I picked up the dog at my feet and wandered off to my bedroom. But right as I was dozing off, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “I do not love my children equally.”
Shocked, I sat straight up in my bed. Where did this blasphemous thought come from? I blurted out, “You have to love us the same or else it wouldn’t be fair!” My protest was answered with, “I don’t. Equal implies my love can be measured, and I assure you…it cannot. Same would mean my children are replaceable or interchangeable, and they are not. My heart is not divided into compartments. No one could take the place of or displace another in my heart. For you see, I don’t love my children equally. I love them uniquely.”
Take a deep breath and listen. God loves us uniquely rather than equally. Believe me, unique is better. Equal implies God’s love is measured or measurable, and it is neither. It’s infinite. Unique carries so much more depth. There is only one like you!
Our Father’s love cannot be likened to a pan of brownies that is painstakingly cut by a loving parent into equal portions so that no child feels slighted. His marvelous love is not subject to portion control. Do you understand He loved you before there was a beginning, and His love for you knows no end? You can turn from Him, run away, and make your bed in hell, but your actions will not stop His love. (Seriously, though, who’d want to sleep in hell?)
Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord said this about His love:
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jeremiah 31:3 ESV)
Notice the past tense here. His love is a settled matter. He loved you, the real you, the unique you, with an everlasting, never-ending, it doesn’t matter how old or how young, how thin or how heavy you are kind of love. Our Father does not have love for you . . . He is love for you.
So what does all this mean? It means there is more than enough immeasurable, inexhaustible love for us all. You don’t have to fight for your place at the table or win His love. No one can take you out or replace you…you have no rival.
If you liked this blog post, this idea is just one of many I explore in my book Without Rival. Pick up your copy here.
