Carrizo Plain National Monument
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
If we want proof of God’s love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God’s love for us.
Jerry Bridges
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Carrizo Plain National Monument
The measure of love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of his only son to become human, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God.
J.I. Packer
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
"The cross is love’s highest human expression and beauty’s ultimate declaration...The cross and resurrection of Jesus shine as supreme demonstrations of beauty. Everything else is a reflection."
Steve DeWitt
John Muir Wilderness, CA
The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
"God’s love is active. He decided to love you when He could have justly condemned you. He’s involved. He’s merciful, not simply tolerant. He hates sin, yet pursues sinners by name. God is so committed to forgiving and changing you that He sent Jesus to die for you. He welcomes the poor in spirit with a shout and a feast. God is vastly patient and relentlessly persevering as He intrudes into your life. God’s love actively does you good. His love is full of blood, sweat, tears, and cries. He suffered for you. He fights for you, defending the afflicted. He fights with you pursuing you in powerful tenderness so that He can change you. He’s jealous, not detached. His sort of empathy and sympathy speaks out, with words of truth to set you free from sin and misery. He will discipline you as proof that He loves you. God Himself comes to live in you, pouring out His Holy Spirit in your heart, so that you will know Him. He puts out power and energy. God’s love has hate in it too: hatred for evil, whether done to you or by you. God’s love demands that you respond to it: by believing, trusting, obeying, giving thanks with a joyful heart, working out your salvation with fear, delighting in the Lord."
David Powlison
Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Ansel Adams Wilderness, CA
Your love is like a waterfall, waterfall
Running wild and free
You hear my heart when I call, when I call
Deep calls to deep
Your love is like a waterfall, waterfall
Raining down on me
“Waterfall” lyrics- Chris Tomlin
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
God’s unfailing love for us is an objective fact affirmed over and over in the Scriptures. It is true whether we believe it or not. Our doubts do not destroy God’s love, nor does our faith create it. It originates in the very nature of God, who is love, and it flows to us through our union with His beloved Son.
Jerry Bridges
Carrizo Plain National Monument
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
“God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.”
Augustine
Carrizo Plain National Monument
Joyful, Joyful
Lord, we adore Thee
God of glory
Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee
“Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” lyrics- Henry van Dyke
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
"God is love, but this is quite different from affirming that our culture’s understanding of love must be God."
Kevin DeYoung
Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, CA
All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth To those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.
In such trials God still truly blesses our faithfulness to Him, but these blessings can as well involve the mercy of removing us from the grasp of this world’s pleasures as rewarding us with worldly delights (Heb. 12:11; James 1:2-4). Whether God chooses the ordinary path of rewarding our goodness with observable blessing, or the extraordinary path of blessing our obedience with trials that will strengthen our character and stretch our faith, His love is never lacking (Heb. 12: 6-11).
Bryan Chapell
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!
North Shore of Kauai, HI
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
"We please Him most not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still. "
A.W. Tozer
Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Proxy Falls, OR
There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love — this eternal Three in One — is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!
Jonathan Edwards
For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, And abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon You.
If we have deep-seated fears that God does not really love us (as many Christians have), we can only go so far in growing nearer to God. There will come a point at which we will fear to trust Him any further because we cannot be sure of His love. When we look at ourselves, or our own faith, or our circumstances we will never be free from those lurking fears. Satan will see to that. But when we lift up our eyes and look on the cross we find the final persuasion that God is gracious towards us. How can He be against us when all His wrath against us fell upon Christ? How can He fail to care for us when He gave the only Son He had for our sake? How can we doubt Him when He has given us evidence of His love sufficient to banish all doubts?
Sinclair Ferguson
Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park, CA
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
"Be certain that even though your repeated failures and sins have worn out everyone else, they have not exhausted the infinite love of God."
F.B. Meyer
I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness, Because You have seen my affliction; You have known the troubles of my soul,
Olallie Creek ,OR
"Jesus does not love like us. We love until we are betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness. We love up to a limit. Jesus loves to the end."
Dane Ortlund
I love those who love me; And those who diligently seek me will find me.
He loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.
C.S. Lewis
Monument Valley Tribal Park, AZ
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
God’s love is at God’s initiative and choice; it isn’t given out on the basis of my performance. God’s gospel love is not wages that I earn with a model life; it is a gift. It is a gift that I cannot earn; more than that, it is a gift that I do not even deserve. God loves weak, ungodly, sinful enemies. The gift is the opposite of what I deserve. God ought to kill me on the spot. Instead, He sent His Son to die in my place.
David Powlison
How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
Yosemite National Park, CA
"We mistakenly look for tokens of God’s love in happiness. We should instead look for them in His faithful and persistent work to conform us to Christ."
Jerry Bridges
But as for me, I shall sing of Your strength; Yes, I shall joyfully sing of Your lovingkindness in the morning, For You have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my strength, I will sing praises to You; For God is my stronghold, the God who shows me lovingkindness.
The deepest need that you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is part of the greatest purpose of God in the universe – the glorification of the grace and power of his Son – the grace and power that bore Him to the cross and kept him there until the work of love was done.
John Piper
Kauai, HI
"He never began to love us for anything in ourselves, nor will he cease to love us because of what he discovers us to be. The love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord, is unassailable by change or shock."
F.B. Meyer
You have granted me life and lovingkindness; And Your care has preserved my spirit.
Bend, OR
“Everything that God does to His people is all love. Sometimes the love is a little disguised, but the love is always there.”
C.H. Spurgeon
All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth To those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.
He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how shall He not with him freely give us all things” (Romans 8:32)? How is it imaginable that God should withhold, after this, spirituals or temporals, from His people? How shall He not call them effectually, justify them freely, sanctify them thoroughly, and glorify them eternally? How shall He not clothe them, feed them, protect and deliver them? Surely if He would not spare this own Son one stroke, one tear, one groan, one sigh, one circumstance of misery, it can never be imagined that ever He should, after this, deny or withhold from His people, for whose sakes all this was suffered, any mercies, any comforts, any privilege, spiritual or temporal, which is good for them.
John Flavel
Three Sister Wilderness, OR
