The One Who Sees You Loves You

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He told them to approach God as “our Father.” Prayer therefore begins with a particular understanding of the One we are speaking to. We are not approaching a distant God who needs to be persuaded to notice us. We are coming before our Father.

Your Father Already Knows

Jesus taught that we do not need to use endless repetition in prayer as though many words will convince God to respond. The reason is simple: our Father already knows what we need before we ask Him.

He sees. He recognizes. He is aware of what is happening in our lives.

Yet when difficulties arise, we can easily begin praying as though God has forgotten us.

We feel alone in the battle. We wonder whether He has noticed the need, whether He understands the pressure, or whether He cares about what we are facing.

But the truth remains: Your Father sees you.

And the One who sees you is also the One who loves you.

Behold the Father's Love

1 John 3:1 tells us to behold the manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God.

To behold something means more than briefly acknowledging it. It means looking at it, considering it, and continuing to see it until the reality of it settles in your heart.

The love being revealed here is specifically the love of a Father toward His children.

It is possible to have heard countless sermons about God's love and still not truly know that love personally.

Scripture speaks about knowing and believing the love God has for us. This knowledge is discovered through relationship. We grow in our understanding of the Father until what we have heard about Him becomes something we genuinely know and experience.

There is a difference between saying, “God loves me,” because we know the correct Christian answer and having that truth established deep within our hearts.

Seeing Him Changes Us

Our transformation does not come merely through having powerful spiritual experiences. We can experience God's presence and still leave unchanged if nothing about our understanding of Him has been unveiled.

Transformation happens as we see Him more clearly. When false ideas about God are removed and truth reveals who He actually is, what we see begins to change us.

When we see that He is gracious, compassionate, faithful, patient and loving, His nature begins to reshape how we think, respond and live. We were created in His image. Therefore, the clearer our revelation of Him becomes, the more His nature can be expressed through us.

Where Do We See God's Love?

This is one of the central truths of the message:

Do not begin by looking at your present circumstances to determine whether God loves you. We often look for evidence of His love in answered prayers, financial breakthroughs, promotions, provision or comfortable circumstances.

When everything goes well, we say, “God loves me.” When things become difficult, doubt begins to rise, but Scripture points us to 1 John which teaches that God's love was manifested when He sent His Son into the world for us. This is where we are first called to know and believe His love.

John 3:16 carries the same truth. God loved the world in this way: He gave His Son.

The cross is therefore not simply part of the Christian message. It is the Father's permanent demonstration of His love toward us.

Before you received the breakthrough, He loved you.

Before the prayer was answered, He loved you.

Before the situation changed, He loved you.

And even when your circumstances seem to contradict everything you hoped for, the cross remains unchanged.

Stop Measuring His Love by Your Circumstances

When our understanding of God's love depends upon circumstances, our relationship with Him becomes unstable. We begin living spiritually as though we are picking petals from a flower: He loves me. He loves me not.

But God's goodness cannot be measured by what is happening around us.

Our belief about who the Father is must come from truth rather than from our circumstances. This allows us to stand in difficult seasons and still declare that He is good.

The believer who is rooted in the Father's love does not need every day to look good in order to believe that God is good.

He Loved You First

Perhaps one of the most beautiful truths about the Father's love is that He loved us first. He did not wait for us to become worthy of His love. He did not begin loving us after we started loving Him. He did not gradually learn to love us because we impressed Him.

His love is parental. A parent can love a child before that child has accomplished anything. The child does not earn that position through performance. The love exists because of relationship. In the same way, God is our Father and we are His children. His love toward us is not something He is still learning to develop.

This does not mean His love leaves us trapped in destructive patterns. His love sent Christ to redeem and free us. The Father's love does not merely excuse our condition, it transforms us.

Know It. Believe It. Live From It.

The Father acted first.

He sent His Son.

Christ was broken for us.

The cross revealed what was already in the heart of the Father toward us.

Our responsibility now is to behold that love until we know it, believe it and become rooted in it. Then our confidence in God no longer rises and falls with our circumstances.

Watch the full session here.