For a long season I have questioned whether I love God enough. I wrestle with what Paul did when he said that which I don’t want to do, I do. And that which I want to do, I do not. Wrestling with the flesh. I repent before the Lord and daily determine to do what I should. Faithfully, the Lord gently leads on, but the enemy is right there to throw up in my face all my failings and try to convince me that there is no hope, I can never change, all there will be is what is now.
Even thoughts that if I loved God enough I wouldn’t struggle. But thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! This is not the end! He moves us from strength to strength and glory to glory. He is the author and finisher of our faith.
After a long season of struggle within of whether I love God enough, I experienced a vivid dream that quieted my heart. Throughout this vivid dream sequence I was weeping and struggling with the same question as to whether I loved God enough. I then saw a man walking purposefully down the sidewalk going toward a building, and I knew it was Jesus. I don’t remember details of his appearance, just that His demeanor was gentleness and mercy itself.
I knew I needed to cross the street to ask Him. He passed me by and I followed behind him and said, “I need to ask you a question…Do I love you enough?” He stopped, turned, and reached out to me and smiled. He thoughtfully said, “The answer is that I love you enough.” I grabbed Him and wept with relief. The burden seemed to leave me all of a sudden and I felt His peace, grace, and love. I woke up with a new revelation of God’s love and tender mercies.
Beloveds, if any struggle with this same burden, just continue to repent and look to God knowing full well that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This has been a long and weary season for the world. Fret not that your heart has felt weary to even hope. Come and find rest for your soul in Me. You struggle, trying to find satisfaction, relief, connection, and joy in created things rather than in Me. Beloved, the whole earth groans and the enemy fights you in every inch of progress you make. The lie is that you have not grown in Me, you cannot not overcome, and there is no hope.
My truth I reveal, for your heart has been seasoned to overcome, what before wouldn’t bother you about your walk and holiness in Me now weighs on your heart even in your sleeping and waking. The enemy pushes your concerns to despair, where I desire repentance, confession, and forgiveness. I change you in the inner places that will show up in the outer, where the enemy demands “seeming” perfection in the outer leaving you broken and gasping for peace in your inner places.
Cease thinking you are not enough. I have made you righteous through my death, burial, and resurrection. I have overcome the enemy and made a way for you to enter into the Peace of God. Find rest, my love, in Me. Hope in Me. Trust not in your flesh, but in Me. I make all things new, even you.
Romans 7:14-8:38
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”