When I Don't Feel Loved

Devotional

You can know something is true and still not feel it.

You know God loves you. You've heard it since the first week you walked into a church. You've sung it. You've said it to other people. But right now, today, it's a sentence on a page. It isn't warm. Maybe someone who was supposed to love you didn't. Maybe you've looked at yourself long enough to decide you're not very lovable. Maybe you're just tired and empty and the words bounce off.

I'm not going to tell you to feel differently. I'm going to show you where the love actually is, because it was never in your feelings to begin with.

Romans 5:8. "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Look at the tense. Shows. Present. Ongoing. God didn't prove his love once and then move on. He keeps pointing at the same thing. And look at the timing. While we were still sinners. Not after you got it together. Not once you became the kind of person worth dying for. In the middle of the worst of you. That's when the cross happened.

This is the thing you have to get. God's love isn't a response to something good in you. It's the cause of everything good in you. So it can't be lost when you don't feel good. It was never resting on that.

Zephaniah gives you the picture. "He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." God singing. Over you. Not tolerating you. Not sighing about you. Singing. Loud singing. Exulting. That's the language of a father at the finish line, not a judge at a bench.

Then Paul prays something in Ephesians 3 that I think he prayed because he knew you'd need it. He prays that you'd "have strength to comprehend... what is the breadth and length and height and depth" of the love of Christ. Four dimensions. He's describing a love so big you need strength just to take it in. And then he says it "surpasses knowledge." It's bigger than what you can figure out. Which means not feeling it doesn't make it smaller. It just means you've hit the edge of what you can hold.

And 1 John 3:1. "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." And so we are. That's a legal fact. Adoption papers. Signed in blood. Your status as a child doesn't fluctuate with your mood.

Here's the center of all of it. On the cross, Jesus didn't feel loved. He felt forsaken. He said so out loud. The one person who had every right to feel the Father's love in every moment went into the dark where it couldn't be felt. Why? So that you'd never be in a dark the Father wasn't in. So that the love could be true for you even on the days you can't feel it. He felt the absence so you could have the presence.

So today, when the feeling isn't there, do this. Don't look inward. Look at the cross. That's where the love is shown. Still. Right now. While you're a sinner. While you're empty.

Feelings follow facts eventually. And the fact is, he died for you. He's singing over you. And so you are his child.