Learning to Receive God’s Gifts

When she opened the gift and saw the jewelry box, she
squealed and remarked on every detail. “Oh, Mommy, this is so
beautiful! This is the prettiest box I’ve ever seen.”

Eager for her to see all I had for her, I said, “Amanda,
open it up.” She opened the box and saw the ballerina twirling to the
delicate music.

“Oh, the dancer is so pretty!” she exclaimed, and was
about to put the box away when I said, “Amanda, do you see there’s
something in there?”

She discovered a tiny drawer and pulled it out carefully.
“The pearl earrings I wanted! Oh, thank you, Mommy!” she exclaimed as
she ran off to put them on. I sat there thinking, She would have been
happy with just the pretty box.

Imagine someone giving you a present. You say, “Thank you
so much for the gift. The paper is beautiful, the bow is breathtaking
and I will cherish it forever.” Then you put the gift on the table and
let it sit unopened. How sad the giver would be after spending time,
effort and resources to give it to you.

God gives us first His Son, Jesus, and then the gift of
His Holy Spirit. From these two gifts all others flow, for all good
things are given to us from God (see Rom. 8:32; James 1:17). Of the
many things He gives us, four gifts in particular are essential to our
emotional healing, restoration and continued wholeness—love, grace,
power and rest.

Unbelievable Love

After I received Jesus I could sense the strong presence
of God’s love, and I had no trouble believing He loved everyone.
Everyone else, that is. I had a hard time believing He loved me. It
took some time of walking with Him and receiving His deliverance before
God’s love really sank into my being.

Man’s love is conditional—limited. God’s love is
unconditional and unlimited. Human love helps us grow, but God’s love
transforms us. It burns away insecurity, limitations and fear.

If you think God couldn’t love you because you’re not
worth loving, you have to understand that He loves differently from us.
You can do nothing to make Him love you more—and nothing to make Him
love you less.

Receiving God’s love means that we don’t have to do
desperate things for approval or be depressed when we don’t receive
love from other people exactly the way we feel we need it. It takes the
pressure off relationships and frees us to be who we were made to be.

If you have doubts about God’s love for you, ask Him to
show it to you. The love of God is not just a feeling. Because God is
love, just spending time in His presence in prayer and praise causes
His love to permeate your being. Opening up and receiving it not only
satisfies your needs but also makes you better able to love others,
even people for whom you have no natural affinity.

If no matter what you do you still don’t believe God
loves you, you may need deliverance from some bondage. Ask Him to show
you what it is and to tell you whether you should seek the help of a
Christian counselor.

Not As We Deserve

In my early 20s, my lifestyle was determined by my
desperate need for love. One disastrous byproduct of this lifestyle was
two abortions in less than two years.

When my husband and I later decided to have a baby,
months went by, and I didn’t get pregnant. I thought surely I was being
punished for the abortions.

“God, I know I don’t deserve to give birth to new life
after twice destroying life within me,” I prayed. “But please have
mercy and help me to conceive.”

God graciously answered that prayer—not only once, but
twice—and gave me my two children as a testimony of His mercy and grace
toward me. He gave me what I did not deserve.

Grace comes into effect when God refrains from punishing
a person who is guilty. Mercy is God’s compassion for our misery beyond
what may be expected. We need both.

If it weren’t for God’s grace and His mercy, we wouldn’t
even be saved, for the Bible tells us, “by grace you have been saved”
(Eph. 2:8, NKJV), and “according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).
Before we met Jesus we were guilty and miserable, but His grace and
mercy have saved us.

People who have been abused, rejected or emotionally
damaged often find it hard to receive God’s grace and mercy. They also
have a harder time extending them to someone else. And one of the
stipulations for receiving mercy is giving it to others.

The difficult part of receiving God’s grace and mercy is
maintaining a balance between thinking I can do whatever I feel like
doing because God’s grace will cover it all and feeling, on the other
hand, that everything in my life depends totally on what I do. Neither
extreme exemplifies grace and mercy.

Our success depends on God, not on what we do. But we
have to act on God’s Word as He reveals it to us and show our love for
Him through obedience. This allows Him to enable us to do things we
otherwise could not, and it frees Him to bless us in any way He desires.