You Are Loved!

Dannah Gresh: You are loved. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth tells us one way she’s reminded of this truth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: On the mantel over my fireplace at home is a framed piece that a dear friend gave me several years ago, and I love the words on this piece. It says, 

Put together all the tenderest love you know, the deepest you have ever felt and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity . . . and you will begin, perhaps, to have some faint glimpse of the love God has for you. 

That’s a lot of love! And it’s only a faint glimpse, just beginning to comprehend the reaches of the love of God. 

Who could know the height, the depth, the width, the breadth, the length of the love of God!? The Scripture says it passes knowledge!

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for Thursday, July 13, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Yesterday, Nancy began a series called “Here Comes the Bridegroom.” This is a timeless series from Nancy about how you can know you’re loved by God and to understand your identity as part of the Bride of Christ. Nancy first taught this in 2003, but amazing love stories never go out of style, do they? Let’s listen.

Nancy: We’re talking this week about the love of God and how He has chosen us to be His Bride. We talked in the last session about the story that we find in the Old Testament in the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs, as it’s called. It’s the supreme song of songs because it’s a love song.

It’s not a book of the Bible that people read very often. It’s certainly not one that people teach about very often, but it’s a wonderful picture of human love, the love of a bride and a bridegroom for each other. 

It’s a powerful biblical teaching on the love between a husband and wife. The Scripture teaches that the marriage relationship of a husband and wife is intended to be an earthly picture of an eternal heavenly reality, and that is, our relationship with the Lord Jesus, our relationship as the Bride of Christ.

And we told the story in the last session of the Song of Solomon just in a nutshell. It’s of how the king went and found a bride—not the women that you would have expected a king to choose. But He went and he found an ordinary common nobody, a peasant girl, and he chose her. 

He said, “I love you, and I want you to be my bride.” He brought her back to his palace and married her and was intimate with her. He began to pour out his love upon her. He loved her. And in the love of that king for his bride we see such a picture of the love of our heavenly Bridegroom.

So, I want to talk in this session about what it means to be the bride of Christ and to look back on that picture we’ve just seen, that story that we’ve read, and to draw out some applications for our lives about what it means to be the bride of Christ.

Now, chances are, I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know—especially if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you will have heard these truths. But one of the problems, as so often happens in human marriage, is that our love grows stale or cold and we have to revive it.

We need to go back and remember what it was that was there in the early love, what it was like. You have to do that at times in your marriage—to talk about your courtship days, about your marriage and the early days of your love—so that you don’t just get too used to each other and start to take each other for granted.

And don’t we often do that in our relationship with the Lord? We forget! We lose the wonder of the fact that He loves us and that His love is unconditional. The love of Christ, to be the bride of Christ means that I am loved. 

Now, you may have experienced to some measure—and all of us have to some measure—what it means to be loved by another human being. You may have had parents who loved you, you may be married to a man who loves you, you may have children who love you, you may have friends who love you. But no matter the extent of the love that you may have experienced on a human level, none of that can begin to compare to the love that Christ has for you as His bride. 

To be the bride of Christ means that you are loved—even if you have never experienced love on a human level, never had a parent who knew how to express love, perhaps you’ve never been married and are still waiting for a man to say, “I love you and I want you to be mine.” Maybe your children have disappointed you.

As I talked with a woman last weekend, one of her children has gone so far from the Lord and is estranged from the family and is not giving to the parents the love that they long for. But for that woman to know that God loves her, that Christ loves her, that He loved us so much that He gave Himself for us!

• His love for us is not based on our worth. 
• It’s not based on our performance. 
• It’s not based on our looks. 
• It’s not based on our brains. 
• It’s not based on our talents.
  It’s not based on anything that we could ever do to deserve or earn that love . . . just like that bride in the Song of Solomon.

In essence, she says to her bridegroom, “What do you see in me? Why do you love me?!” [He responds:] “Because I love you. I just love you!” It’s in the nature of the lover, not in the nature of the one who is loved.

And I’ll tell you what, there is no human being on earth who could love me that way or who could love you that way. I mean, we love each other more with a “because” love or a conditional love or an “if” love: “I love you when you do this. I love you because you do that. I love you because you’re like this.” 

We can’t help ourselves—apart from Christ—from loving that way. But God loves us in an entirely different way, a selfless way, a way that is not conditioned on the object of the love. To be the bride of Christ means that He has chosen you . . . that you have been chosen!

Now, we all know in greater or lesser degrees what it means to be rejected. I can remember as a kid . . . I was not then, nor am I now, particularly athletic. You remember at recess or in gym class when they would play a game like kickball or something like that and they would choose sides? 

Every time this happened (I can still remember this), they’d appoint the two captains who were the two really athletic kids. Then they would start to pick their teams. I knew I was going to be the last one picked! The only reason they picked me was because there wasn’t anybody else left to pick. I was not going to be an asset to that kickball team.

Now, I can’t say that left great scars on my life, because I didn’t particularly enjoy kickball, so I would probably just as soon not have been chosen for that. But in more serious ways in life, we’ve all experienced what it is to have someone say, “I don’t want you!”

Some of you have experienced that in a marriage. You had such hope and thought there was love, and the man said there was. Then you woke up one morning and he’s saying, “I don’t love you anymore. I don’t want to be in this marriage. I want another model—a younger one or prettier one”—whatever.

You experienced what, for a woman, has to be as great a rejection as there can be in an earthly realm. Someone saying, “I don’t want you!” Some of you experienced that from your parents, maybe even a parent you never knew. Maybe you don’t even know who that parent was; all you know is they didn’t want you.

Some of you have lived with the wounds and pains and scars of rejection and have taken them with you into adult life. Maybe you’ve thought there never could be real healing, because you can’t go back and change that situation.

Can I say, if you’re ever going to enter into wholeness and fullness, you’re going to have to come to experience what it is to have been chosen by the One whose choice matters. The Scripture says to us in 1 Peter chapter 2 that Jesus was rejected by man but He was chosen by God, and therefore He was precious.

That’s what makes anyone precious. That’s what gives us our worth, our value. It is not ultimately what anyone else thinks of us, but what God thinks, that God has chosen us. And you know, the interesting thing in God’s choice of us is that the only qualification for His choosing us is that we don’t have any qualifications!

Now, in the human realm, if a husband chooses a wife or a wife says, “I want to marry this man,” there are generally some reasons that you want to marry that person. There are some qualifications that matter to you.

But in God’s choice of us the only thing that qualifies us is that there is nothing to qualify us. Did you get that? That’s the nature of grace: it’s utterly, totally undeserved. There’s no reason He would choose us.

It’s not because we add anything to His team. I’s not because we have some ability that will help Him out. The only thing that makes Him choose us, the only qualification we have is that we don’t have any qualifications. We are sinners! We’re not beautiful; we’re ugly in our hearts, in our spirits. 

There’s a powerful text in the Old Testament that gives us a word picture of how God chose us when we were utterly undeserving of His choice. If you have your Bible you may want to turn there, to the book of Ezekiel, chapter 16. God is talking about His love relationship with the nation of Israel, with the Jewish people.

God said He was a husband to them, they were His bride, as we—the Church in the New Testament era—are the Bride of Christ. So, in the Old Testament here, God is talking about His relationship with the Jewish people.

Now, He’s going to tell them where they came from, what condition they were in when He found them. As I read this text, it’s a word picture of the condition we were in when Christ came and found us. He says, 

Your ancestry and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. (v. 3)

Now I don’t know what all those “ite” names mean to you, but here’s what they really mean: those were all idolatrous people. They were pagans. They were far from God. They had no relationship with God.

He’s saying, “You were born estranged from Me. You were born, not as a worshiper of God, but as a worshiper of false gods. You had no place in My family. You were a stranger, a foreigner.” Then He says, verse 4, 

On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths.

No one took care of you! You were in a pathetic condition! Verse 5: 

“No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. 

This is a picture of every human being who enters the earth, in terms of his spiritual condition. He’s born into sin, born into Satan’s kingdom with no hope, no joy, no life! This is a picture of our condition as we were born into this world apart from Christ. Then he says, verse 6, 

“I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, 'Live!'” 

He spoke the word and He gave us life! If you have spiritual life today, it’s not because you did anything to earn it.

It’s not because you went to church. It’s not because you signed on a dotted line somewhere or went through a catechism class or were baptized or you give money to the church or you’re a good person.

If you have spiritual life today—if you are related to God today—it’s because God saw you when you could not help yourself. You couldn’t do anything about your fallen, sinful condition. God said to you, “Let there be life!” 

Life comes from God! We can’t initiate it. You can’t make yourself a Christian. God said, “Let there be life! Live!” He says in Ezekiel 16, verse 7, 

“I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.”

There’s the progression of the love relationship here. Then he says, “‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you . . .” Having already spoken life and quickened the heart, He said, “[I looked at you and saw that you] were old enough for love.”

“I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.” (v. 8) 

What is God saying? “I married you!” That’s the Old Testament picture of marriage. Jewish marriage pictures a wife coming under the covering of her husband’s mantle. He takes her under his care, under his protection, under his love. He gives her his name; he gives her his inheritance; he gives her himself. He enters into a covenant with her and she becomes his! “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3). He goes on to say in verses 9 and 10: 

“I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry . . . You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.” (vv. 11, 13–14)

Now as we see that Old Testament picture, I’m reminded of the New Testament passage that says very much the same thing. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 tells us, 

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins [That’s the condition you were born into, every one of you, everyone of us] in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. [Despised, rejected, pathetic . . . but] because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive. (vv. 1–5)

He said, “Live!” He quickened us! I could have heard the gospel preached a thousand times and never come to repentance and faith in Christ if God didn’t quicken the truth to my heart.

You probably know some people like that. They’ve heard the gospel preached over and over and over and over again, but it’s never clicked. God is the One who has to turn the light on, who has to quicken their heart.

[God] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,i n order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast. (Eph. 2:5–9)

As the apostle Paul says in Titus 3:5, 

Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us—through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

It’s a picture of what God has done for us in making us the bride of Christ! So to be the bride of Christ means that you are loved, it means that you are chosen, it means that God delights in you! And we all want someone to delight in us. We want to know that we matter to someone. The Scripture says that God delights in you as His bride!

We read in the Song of Solomon . . . and we’ve been looking at that story about a king who chose a bride who didn’t merit his love, but he gave it to her anyway, he made her his bride. The Song of Solomon says in chapter 3:11 on the day of his wedding his heart rejoiced! That’s how God feels about you!

In fact, Isaiah 62:5 says, “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.” And then I love that verse in Zephaniah chapter 3:17 that says, “[The Lord your God] will take great delight in you; he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” God delights in you!

Now, ladies, let me ask you: if we know and really believe that we are loved, that we’re chosen through no merit of our own, that God delights in us, how could we ever be really depressed?

Now, I’m not saying we won’t ever feel bad, we won’t ever have tough things happen, we won’t ever feel down; but how could we live in a depressed condition if we really believe that we are loved, that we are chosen, and that God delights in us?

Do you know that in the most horrific of life’s circumstances, the fact that God loves you, that He’s chosen you, that He delights in you will be your heart’s lifeline! It will be your mind’s sanity to know that He delights in you.

To be His bride means that you belong to Him, that you are not your own. The Scripture says that He paid a great price to purchase us as His bride. It was the price of His blood. The beloved says to his bride in the Song of Solomon, “Let me see your face, let me hear your voice” (2:14). He wants to be intimate with us.

To be His bride means that He wants to reveal His beauty and His glory in us and through us! The goal is that when people see us they would see the beauty of the Lord Jesus reflected through us.

You know, that bride in the Song of Solomon, when the story starts out, she’s not very attractive, and the women are kind of talking about it in the town. But by the end of the book, the women are talking about what a beautiful woman she is! What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened: that bride was transformed by the love of her beloved. She lived in his presence. She took on His likeness, and she began to reflect his beauty. By the end of the book she is the fairest among women!

You know, by the end of the story of my life, that’s what I’m going to be, and that’s what you’re going to be! But even between here and there, as we grow into His likeness, as we reflect His beauty, the goal is that people would look at us, and they would say, “She looks like Jesus!” And as a result, they would desire to know Him as well.

Dannah: Nancy will be right back to pray. When you really grasp your identity as someone unconditionally loved, part of the Bride of Christ, it will change everything about your life! Maybe you know someone who could use that reminder. 

Why don’t you send them a link from that teaching from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth? It’s part of a series called “Here Comes the Bridegroom,” and you can send them a link by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

In fact, I think I’ll share a link with a friend whose name just came to mind. Let me write that down. I still have that notepad I told you about yesterday here on the studio table. Along the left side of this notepad is a quote from Nancy. It says, “Anything that makes me need God is a blessing.”

There are some pretty flowers decorating the notes. It’s a little bigger than your standard sticky note. I would love to send you a notepad just like this! It’s our gift to you when you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts this week.

And look, it’s really not about the notepad. Here’s the important thing: Revive Our Hearts is possible because listeners like you contribute to help us pay the bills. So, Revive Our Hearts is producing podcasts like Revive Our Hearts, bringing you teaching like what you heard today.

We’re also speaking to the next generation of young women through other podcasts like this one: 

Claire Black: “This is True Girl, a podcast for girls and their moms. Together we’ll explore God’s truth for us one drive at a time.” 

Dannah: And we offer you the weekly videocast and podcast: Grounded. It’s a weekly infusion of hope and perspective.

Erin Davis: I’m Erin Davis, and you’re watching—I mean this!—a potentially world-changing edition of Grounded!

Dannah: Outreaches like thisare possible because friends like you give. And when you do, we’d love to send you the practical, beautiful little notepad I mentioned earlier. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com to make your donation of any size and request the notepad, or call 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow Nancy reminds us that a bride gives a lot of attention to getting ready for her wedding. She’ll challenge us: Are we getting ready to meet our heavenly Bridegroom? Now she’s back to pray.

Nancy: Father, we’re naturally so performance driven, so bent on proving that we’re “good enough.” It’s so intuitive in us to try to earn or deserve acceptance and love. But thank You for showing us a love and acceptance that are totally, utterly of grace. Thank You for seeing us when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, when we had nothing to attract You to us. And in that fallen condition where You found us, You loved us, You chose us.

Help us, Lord, to accept it by faith—whether we feel like it or not, whether we sense Your love or not. Help us to realize that You do love to receive that love. Thank You for Your acceptance of us in the Beloved. We are rich, for we are loved and chosen by You!

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is reminding you of your true identity and calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ!

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