As I grew up, I heard about the love of God almost every single day. The love of God was beautifully true, but I soon found that what I was hearing lacked something.
I discovered that there were many people in my life who claimed to love me, but many of them didn’t actually like me. I knew this because, for one reason, I could tell the difference between how someone treated me when they liked me and when they didn’t, and for another reason, occasionally someone would come straight out and tell me that they loved me, but they didn’t really like me. I learned that I also was capable of loving someone, to the point of being willing to lay down my life for them, and still not necessarily like their personality traits or life choices, and not like spending intimate time with them.
As a child, I knew God’s love for me, and I believed it with all my heart. (I had other things I needed to learn about His love, but it was always a certainty.) However, with the examples that I had in my personal life, I began to believe that God might be the same way – that He loved me, would send His Son to die for and redeem me, and placed a high value on me as His creation… BUT… there might be times that he didn’t actually like me very much. I certainly made choices that didn’t please Him, and that broke his heart because it created more separation between us, and He doesn’t like it when I choose to be apart from Him or do something that will harm me/others, but of course, it wasn’t true. I’m grateful that God has spent time over the last several years teaching me just how much he likes me and in what ways.
The other day, I was doing an exercise in listening prayer, and the prompt was exactly that: God, what do you like about me? It was a tender time of intimacy with my Father while he poured out His heart to me and highlighted the things that He especially liked about me. Some of them were a surprise, and some of the things I would have expected never came up at all. But I wrote them all down as He ministered to my heart, and now I’m going to share them with you.
Abba, what do you like about me?
You are so precious to me. I like so much about you. You are gentle and you are kind. You always give me all the faith that you have, no matter how much it is. I love how you approach things with eagerness. I love you so much. Oh, my daughter…… [drawn out in reflection on the word “daughter”] You trust me implicitly, without question, even when you don’t understand. You have amazing questions, they are perfect, and you ask them honestly without letting them affect your trust in Me. You are so beautiful, and you care about being beautiful for Me, and not for anyone else. I like your brain; it is honest and gives Me endless pleasure. I like spending time with you. You have endured and have let me refine you through fire. I desire to be in your presence. I will always be your Abba, but you have grown into a spiritual woman who I enjoy being friends with. You are still learning what it means to be friends with Me, but you will [learn], and I don’t have to wait to like being your friend. You are My precious friend. You try with everything in you. Well done.
This kind of intimate communication with God may be foreign to you; I know it was to me for a long time. I highly encourage you to learn about it and practice it, exercising the muscle of listening for the voice of God instead of only monologuing to Him. You can start with a small prompt like this one. And always take everything back to Scripture – I can go back to anything said in this message to me and find references in the Bible for how it aligns with what God says and thinks. If there were anything that contradicted what Scripture says about God’s character, deeds, thoughts, etcetera, I would know certainly that it was not from Him. His Voice is a sweet and consistent sound in my ear. Thank you, Abba for knowing me, and loving me, and liking me. Always continue to teach me how to hear You more every day.
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