No Matter What You’ve Done, God Will Take You Back
By Rick Warren
“With deep love I will take you back.” Isaiah 54:7 (GNT)
This Christmas season, do you need a little refreshment in your life? Are you feeling a little dried up? Do you need some revival?
Come back to God.
You may say, “Rick, you don’t know what I’ve done.” I don’t need to know, because it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. God still wants you to come back to him.
You may say, “Isn’t God going to scold me? I’ve been away from him for months, years, decades.” Here’s what the Bible says God will do when you come back to him: “With deep love I will take you back” (Isaiah 54:7 GNT).
God isn’t mad at you. God is mad about you! No one will ever love you more than the Creator who made you. God the Father created you, Jesus the Son died for you, and God’s Spirit wants to live in you. Christmas is proof of God’s love for you.
Many people can’t feel God’s love because they’re listening to the wrong voices. If you listen to what other people say about you, it’ll get you down. If you listen to what you tell yourself, it’ll get you down. Stop believing everything you tell yourself, because it’s not all true. You lie to yourself more than you lie to anybody else. You’re not the best judge of you, because your feelings lie all the time. (This is true for all of us!)
You have to decide whom you’re going to believe. Are you going to build your life on what everybody else thinks about you? Are you going to listen to what the critics say about you on social media? Are you going to listen to your own feelings?
Or are you going to listen to what God says about you, which is the truth?
Acts 3:19 says, “Now it’s time to change your ways! Turn to face God so he can wipe away your sins [and] pour out showers of blessing to refresh you” (MSG).
You’re deeply flawed, but you are deeply loved, and you are infinitely valuable. You may have come to the end of yourself and feel like you don’t have anywhere to turn. But there is always Someone to turn to.
With deep love, God will take you back.
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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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