Loving God Isn’t Hard

I love the story of the woman who broke her alabaster jar of perfume on Jesus’ feet. The way she loved Jesus has been told all around the world for generations. The most powerful part of that story to me is when Jesus says, “Because her many sins have been forgiven, she loves much.” (Luke 7:47)

Working with kids every day, I see kids who love Jesus a lot, and I see kids who are really struggling. I tell our team all the time, if we want to see our children love Jesus, we need to show them how forgiven they are. They don’t need to know how bad they are. They don’t need to be reminded of all they’ve done wrong. They need to be reminded of what Jesus has done.

Our love for Him is always a response to His love for us. “We love Him because He first love us.” (1 John 4:19) Jesus released forgiveness to us on the cross. He forgave us for everything first before we ever even loved Him.

This women in Jesus’ house recognized how forgiven she was for all she’d done wrong. She saw Jesus’ love for her, and she loved Him in return. She loved Jesus so much so that her story will always be told wherever the gospel is preached.

This is what we want for our lives and for our children. We want our stories of how we love Jesus to be told.

If you don’t feel like you love Jesus the way He deserves to be loved, you just need to be reminded that He has forgiven you and that He loved you first. And if you have children that are struggling to love God well, you don’t have to tell them to love God more. Loving God will be an automatic response when we can show and tell them how forgiven they are.

What was true for the woman in the story, is also true for us. Jesus can say the same thing over us and our family… because we have been forgiven, we love much!