God's Love Revealed: How He Turns Our Greatest Needs Into Opportunities to Know Him

"God is love." That may be one of the simplest statements in the Bible, but it contains an almost unfathomable truth: God is love.

Yet there is something about God's love that can be difficult for us to fully appreciate. God is invisible. We cannot see Him with our physical eyes, and because His love is not always immediately visible either, we can easily take it for granted, fail to recognize it, or simply not understand how amazing it really is.

But God doesn't merely tell us that He loves us. He shows us. And I believe this helps us understand something important about why God allowed humanity to fall and why He permits us to live in a fallen world.

God Gave Us Free Will Because He Wants a Relationship With Us

God made mankind in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). One important aspect of that is that we are personal beings who possess a will. God Himself has a will, and He created us with the capacity to make genuine choices. That matters because God desires a genuine relationship with us.

A computer can be programmed to say, "I love you," but it doesn't actually love. It simply does what it was programmed to do. God didn't create us that way. He didn't want humanity to be a collection of pre-programmed creatures who could do nothing except obey. He wanted us to be capable of knowing Him, trusting Him, choosing Him, and loving Him.

But giving humanity genuine freedom carried risk. If we have the ability to freely love God, we also have the ability to reject Him. And that's exactly what happened.

God Allowed the Fall-But He Wasn't Surprised by It

God could have prevented Satan from tempting Eve. He could have stopped Adam and Eve from eating the forbidden fruit. He could have intervened. But in His sovereignty, He allowed them to exercise the freedom He had given them. And God already knew what would happen.

The Fall was not an unexpected disaster that forced God to come up with a backup plan. God's plan of redemption existed before the foundation of the world. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:4-6: "He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace."

Think about that. Before creation, God already had redemption in mind. Before Adam sinned, God knew. Before Satan tempted Eve, God knew. Before humanity experienced the consequences of sin, God knew. And before the cross, God knew.

The Fall did not catch God off guard. He knew that giving humanity free will carried risk, and He already had a plan to redeem fallen humanity through Jesus Christ.

Sin Brought Shame, Fear, and Hiding

Genesis 2:25 tells us that Adam and Eve were naked and felt no shame. Then came Genesis 3. After they disobeyed God, we read: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked."

Their physical condition hadn't changed. Their spiritual condition had. Suddenly, they experienced shame. They tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. Then, when they heard God in the garden, they hid.

God called out: "Where are you?" Of course, God knew where they were. He wasn't asking because He needed information. He was calling them out of hiding.

Then God asked Adam: "Who told you that you were naked?" God already knew the answer. But He wanted Adam to think about what had happened. Why was Adam suddenly ashamed? Why was he afraid? Why was he hiding? What had changed? The answer was sin.

Before the Fall, nakedness was accompanied by innocence and no shame. After the Fall, sin brought shame, fear, alienation, and hiding. And yet, even in this darkest moment, something remarkable happens: God comes looking for them. They ran from God. God pursued them. They hid. God called. They sinned. God began dealing with the consequences while simultaneously unfolding His redemptive purpose.

Our Need Can Become an Opportunity to Experience God's Love

This is where I believe we can begin to see something beautiful about God's dealings with us. We can know intellectually that God is merciful. But there is a difference between knowing that God is merciful and experiencing His mercy.

We can be told that God is our helper. But when we're helpless and cry out to Him, we discover what His help means. We can be told that God is our refuge. But when we're afraid and run to Him, we experience Him as our refuge. We can be told that God is gracious. But when we realize that we have nothing to offer Him, His grace becomes incredibly precious. We can be told that God forgives. But when we recognize our own sin and receive His forgiveness, we discover something about His heart that we could never understand merely as an abstract concept.

This is one reason the circumstances of a fallen world can become opportunities for us to discover the depths of God's love. Pain. Heartache. Troubles. Trials. Afflictions. Failure. Weakness. Need. None of these things are good in themselves. But God is so sovereign and so good that He can use even these things to draw us toward Himself and reveal His character to us.

He can show us mercy. He can heal. He can deliver. He can rescue. He can help. He can give grace in our time of need. And when we experience His love, something happens: We love Him more.

John says: "We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19 God's love comes first. We experience it. We respond to it. And our relationship with Him deepens.

God Can Turn a Negative Into a Positive

One of the most encouraging truths in Scripture is that God can take something genuinely negative and bring something genuinely good out of it. Joseph expressed this beautifully when he told his brothers: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good." Genesis 50:20

The ultimate example, of course, is the cross. The crucifixion was an act of terrible injustice and evil. Jesus, the innocent Son of God, was rejected and put to death. Yet God used that very event to accomplish the salvation of the world. What appeared to be defeat became victory. What appeared to be tragedy became redemption. What appeared to be Satan's triumph became God's triumph.

This is the kind of God we serve. He can turn a negative into a positive. That doesn't mean everything that happens to us is good. It means that God is so powerful and so sovereign that the things that are not good cannot prevent Him from accomplishing His good purposes.

That's why Romans 8:28 is such a powerful promise: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him." Paul doesn't say that everything that happens is good. He says that God works in all things for good. The negative does not get the final word. God does.

Grace Means God Gets the Glory

And this is why salvation is by grace. Paul says: "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

We cannot save ourselves. We don't earn God's love. We don't rescue ourselves from sin. God does it. He gives us grace. He gives us forgiveness. He gives us salvation. He gives us adoption. And because it is His work, the glory belongs to Him.

Ephesians 1 says that God predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ "to the praise of his glorious grace." Think about the extraordinary exchange taking place. We bring our sin, weakness, failure, and need. He gives us mercy, grace, forgiveness, redemption, adoption, and life.

What a great deal! We get to be loved. We get to be saved. We get to experience His goodness. And He gets the glory.

From Him, Through Him, and To Him

This brings us to Paul's magnificent conclusion in Romans 11:36: "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen."

Everything ultimately points back to God. Our salvation is from Him. Our salvation is accomplished through Him. And everything ultimately returns to Him in glory.

God's love is the beginning. God's grace is the means. God's redemption is the result. And God's glory is the ultimate purpose.

What a Great God

When we step back and look at the whole story, we see something astonishing. God created us in His image. He gave us free will so that genuine love and relationship would be possible. He knew that freedom carried risk. He knew the Fall would happen. And yet, before the foundation of the world, He already had a plan to redeem us through Christ.

When humanity fell, God came looking. When we were ashamed, He showed mercy. When we were guilty, He offered forgiveness. When we were helpless, He gave grace. When we were lost, He came to rescue us. And when we encounter suffering and difficulty, He can take even those things and work them together for good.

Why? Because God is love. He loves to show His love. He wants us to know His love. He wants us to experience His mercy. He wants us to receive His grace. And He wants us to love Him in return. The God who created us for relationship with Himself has made a way for fallen humanity to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ.

So yes, the world we live in is fallen. Yes, sin has brought pain, shame, suffering, and death. But sin does not have the final word. Suffering does not have the final word. Satan does not have the final word. Death does not have the final word. God does.

And His final word is redemption. His final word is grace. His final word is love. And when everything is finally brought to its appointed conclusion, we will discover that it was all—from Him, through Him, and to Him.

"To him be the glory forever. Amen."

What a great God. What a great salvation. What a great love.

Attribution notice: Scripture take from the Holy Bible NIV, copyright Zondervan, used by permission. Image generated using AI. This article was written by Len Lacroix with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools.

Author's note:  If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Blessings of Being in Christ. Does Being Saved Make All Your Problems Disappear?, The Love of Jesus, Having the Love of God in Your Heart, Compelled by Love, One Thing, Seven Things That Accumulate Building Materials in Heaven, and the other posts available through the links on the Home page. You may also access my complete blog directory at Writing for the Master.

Do You Want to Know Him?
If you want to know Jesus, you can. It all begins when you repent and believe in Him.  Do you know what God's Word, the Bible says?

“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’” (Mar 1:14b-15).  He preached that we must repent and believe. 

Please see my explanation of this in my post called "Do You Want to Know Jesus?"

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Len Lacroix is the founder of Doulos Missions International.  He was based in Eastern Europe for four years, making disciples, as well as helping leaders to be more effective at making disciples who multiply, developing leaders who multiply, with the ultimate goal of planting churches that multiply. His ministry is now based in the United States with the same goal of helping fulfill the Great Commission. www.dmiworld.org.