Does He Really Love Me?

Does God really love me? This question often hangs in the back of the mind of everyone, believer and pre-believer alike, including those who are not sure what or whether they believe. The next time you ask yourself this question, consider the following—something that has been triggered in my mind by the season we are in (I write this on “Good Friday,” and my mind last night was drawn to the Garden of Gethsemane).

There is only one place in the New Testament where Jesus refers to his father as "Abba" (which as many of you know is the equivalent of our "Papa" or "Daddy"). That one place is recorded in Mark's Gospel and is found in the prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 15:36). I have no doubt that Jesus often called his father "Abba," but it is hugely significant to me that the one place where this is recorded is the time when Jesus cried out to his father in the Garden of Gethsemane. There in the garden, when Jesus in his humanity was most afraid of what was before him, he called out to his father in the most tender, childlike terms to ask his daddy if it were possible to take away the awful cup of suffering that was in front of him. "Daddy, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Does God love you? God's answer is found written in blood and sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane as well as later on the cross. For here in the garden we see a dearly loved son calling out to his father, using the tenderest word possible: "Daddy." There has never been, I am sure, in all of history a prayer that Father God wanted to answer yes to more than this one. But he did not. Why? Because of his great love for you and me. No one loves Jesus more than God the Father. And yet with all that infinite love for His son, the Father chose to say "no" to his son's request to take this cup away. Why did he do that? Because he loves you. There are some who might say that it was "easy" for God to say "no" to the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane because God knew the outcome. Oh how terribly mistaken such a thought is! Such thinking greatly underestimates, infinitely underestimates, the infinite price that God the Father and God the Son paid in order to express love for us through the cross. Knowing the outcome did not in any way diminish the pain of the most loving Father of the most beloved Son, but because He loves you, Father and Son embraced immeasurably great pain.

The next time you hear a child say "Daddy" or "Papa" or something similar, I encourage you to remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, calling out to his father in the most intimate of terms, "Daddy, please take this cup from me!" And then remember that because of his great love for you, because of their great love for you, the prayer that Father most wanted to answer yes to was answered "No!"

Are you thinking that this is all well and good for everyone else, but that God doesn't really love you? I close with something I recently heard Bill Johnson say, "You are not that special!" To suggest that God would make an exception to His love for you is to greatly overestimate yourself in the scheme of things! :-)

So get lost, stay lost, totally immersed, in His love,

Tom, Abba's least child