We often feel like failures; we fall short and we know it. We may not read His Word often enough, pray enough, go to church enough, love others enough, or tithe enough. We design of list of conditions, obligations or actions that we must DO to remain in God’s good graces. In our minds, if we DO these things without fail, not only do we feel we have earned the right to approach the throne of God in time of need.

Don’t get me wrong, those things I listed should be an integral part of our Christian lives, but they are not requirements to receive God’s love. As a matter of fact, there are NO requirements in order for God to love us. The truth is, we can never DO enough to earn God’s love. God specifically tells us that there’s nothing we can do to earn His love or keep it. It’s a gift through His grace, and has nothing at all to do with anything we could offer (Ephesians 2:8-9).

God’s love toward us is free of conditions and parameters. God didn’t resolve to love us when we decided we should stop sinning; when we decided going to church would be a good idea; when we came up with a list of things to DO.

We didn’t decide anything: God did!

Here’s what God decided to do: “But God clearly shows and proves His own love for us, by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Still sinners. Did you catch that? This means God chose to love us before WE even made a decision about God!!!

Let that sink in.

We get to make a lot of decisions in this life. But we don’t get to decide whether or not God loves us: He decided that long before we were born. His love is divine and transcends limits and conditions.

Let’s stop adding conditions to an unconditional love.

There’s nothing we could do to make Him love us more, and there’s nothing we could do to cause Him to love us any less. It’s not how well WE love Him, it’s how well HE loves us.