Know That God Is For You — Our Bible App

Know That God Is for You

Stephen Cowden

Day 1 of 6: Believe God Loves You

Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, come with me.
Song of Songs 2:10 (NRSV)

God loves you.

Take a deep breath and say that to yourself: God loves me.

Say it to yourself with more conviction: God loves me!

Now say it out loud to the air: God loves me.

Do you believe it?

I had a vivid dream the other night. I was a guest at a Bible study, and we were reading about Sodom and Gomorrah. (This is not a dream I would choose to have.) The group’s Bible study guide emphasized that God destroyed all residents of these cities because of their sin. God saw their sin of homosexuality, hated it, and — BOOM — destroyed them. God is dead serious about sin, the group leader told us.

Brown Wood Bed & Breakfast Inns Instagram Post (3).png

That message, I knew, was incomplete. I flipped to the front of the study guide and, sure enough, it came from a very conservative publisher. “Hmph,” I grunted to myself. The woman next to me heard and asked why I was scoffing. “This isn’t the whole message,” I told her. She asked what I meant, explaining that it was right there in the scripture. By now everyone was listening.

So dream-me did my best to explain. “First of all, this isn’t a story about sexual orientation. The Bible says in other places that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was love of power and abuse. They wanted to gang rape the guests in their city.

“But more importantly, how do you reconcile God’s utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with the rest of the Bible? How do you fit the idea that God saw their sin and destroyed them with Jesus saying, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son?’”

(Sidebar: By this point in my dream, a group of children had come in and sat down at a table behind me. When I started reciting John 3:16, they all joined in with enthusiasm. It was adorable.)

“God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but to save it,” I concluded. “What does that mean for us?”

Then I woke up. But the dream has stuck with me, and I keep wondering whether it might actually mean something.

Do I actually, deep down, believe that God loves me? Do They like even the aspects of myself that I don’t like? What about the parts of me that cause deep shame, because others say God shouldn’t love those parts?

I admit it’s hard to believe. But it’s true, my friend.

Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) is a love poem between two people. It’s so intimate that it makes me blush a little. But if this poem can be understood as between God and Their people, as many scholars believe it can, then it means that God loves you and me with a very detailed knowledge of who we are.

God loves you the way that They made you. Not just who you wish you were or who you want to become. God’s love for you is deep and real and intimate.

There are many people — even many Christians — who think that gender identity and sexual orientation are choices, lifestyles, or agendas. They don’t listen to people who know that these are unchangeable parts of their God-given identities. If you identify as LGBTQ+, God celebrates that about you. God made you who you are, and They love who you are.

Hear God’s invitation to you: “Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, come with me.” Go with God on the journey of today, growing in your belief that you are God’s Beloved.

Day 1 of 6: Believe God Loves You

Start reading this 6-day devotional in the app. Find it on the Featured shelf.