When You Know How Much God Loves You, Everything Changes
- Henley Samuel
- Apr 10
- 6 min read
April 10, 2026
There is a question that quietly shapes every prayer you pray, every battle you fight, and every season you walk through: Do you truly know that God is good? Not in a distant, theological sense, but in a personal, living, present-tense way? This is not a small question. How you answer it changes everything.
The One Truth That Unlocks Everything
The Word of God makes a declaration so simple, yet so profound, that we can spend a lifetime discovering its depths. In 1 John 4:8, it says plainly:
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." 1 John 4:8
God is not merely loving. He does not simply have love as one of His qualities. He is love itself. That means yesterday, He was love. Today, He is love. Tomorrow, He will still be love. He cannot be otherwise. And yet, for so many sincere believers, this truth has never truly taken root. They pray, they believe, they fast, they attend services faithfully, and still find themselves wondering why their lives seem unchanged, why answers seem delayed, why the breakthrough never quite arrives.
The answer is found right here: faith works through love. Not willpower. Not religious effort. Not discipline alone. It is love that makes faith move.
"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Galatians 5:6
The Root Problem That Started It All
To understand why this matters so deeply, we have to go back to the very beginning. In Genesis 3, the serpent did something extraordinarily specific. It did not come with a frontal attack. It came with a question. It whispered to Eve:
"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:5
Do you see what the serpent was actually doing? It was planting a seed of doubt about God's love. It was suggesting: God is hiding something from you. If He truly loved you, He would have given you this. His withholding is proof that He does not fully have your best interests at heart. And when that thought took root, everything fell apart.
Yet notice what Scripture had already established just two chapters earlier. In Genesis 1:26, God declared:
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Genesis 1:26
Adam and Eve were already made in God's image. They already had everything. The serpent's lie was not revealing a truth; it was creating a false perception of lack where no lack existed. And that false perception, that doubt about God's goodness, was the soil in which the first sin grew.
When you do not know God's love, you will eventually fall. It is inevitable.
Your Position Has Already Been Established
When you came to Christ and were born again, something magnificent happened. Ephesians 2 tells us that God did not merely forgive us and leave us to fend for ourselves. He seated us together with Christ in heavenly places. Think about what that means.
Before Adam and Eve were created, God had already prepared everything for them. The food, the air, the beauty of Eden, every provision was in place before the first human drew breath. Creation came before mankind. And in the same way, before you walk into any problem, before any challenge presents itself, God has already made provision. Your position in Christ does not begin with struggle. It starts from victory.
The Christian life does not move toward victory. It moves from it.
Many of the songs we sing, however, and many of the prayers we pray, tell a different story. We cry out as if God needs to be persuaded. We beg as if His hand must be forced. But the Word says He has already seated us in heavenly places. That is our starting point.
"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:6
Why Your Faith May Not Be Working
Paul writes clearly in Galatians 5:6 that faith works through love. Not faith alone, as a dry, intellectual exercise. Not faith combined with striving and self-effort. Faith that is energized, activated, and made effective by love.
This is why some believers can quote every promise in the Bible, attend every service, and perform every religious duty, and yet experience little tangible breakthrough. The engine of faith is love. And love, in this context, means truly knowing and receiving the love that God has for you. When that love is doubted, when it is questioned or misunderstood, faith stalls. It has nothing to run on.
Proverbs 13:10 offers a sharp insight here: only pride produces strife. Much of the struggling that believers experience does not come from spiritual warfare alone. It comes from a kind of hidden pride that minimizes what God has done and maximizes what we must do. True humility is not thinking small of yourself. True humility is making God's work great and your problem small. It is singing songs that declare what He has done, not merely lamenting what has not yet come.
Humility is not shrinking yourself down. It is magnifying what God has already done.
God Has Never Stopped Coming Toward You
From the very moment Adam and Eve fell, God did not abandon them. He came looking. He called. He covered them. He walked with them even outside the garden. When Cain committed the world's first murder, God still came to speak with him, extending mercy and placing a mark of protection on him (Genesis 4:15). When humanity fell so deeply into corruption that judgment came in Noah's day, God was not absent. He found one family, preserved them by grace, and through them kept the door open for a Messiah to come.
This is the story from the beginning. God keeps coming. He keeps reaching. He keeps drawing near. The whole Bible is a love story, the account of a God who keeps going after the people He made, no matter how far they wander.
The whole Bible is God saying, through every page: I still want to be near you.
Through Moses, He declared His desire to speak with all the people of Israel, not just their leader. Through Samuel, He reminded them that when they rejected earthly kings, they were actually rejecting Him, the one who loved them most. Every rejection was met, not with abandonment, but with another invitation.
Conclusion
Knowing God's love is not a spiritual extra. It is the very foundation on which everything else stands. From the beginning of creation, God has been a God who comes, who covers, who calls, and who never stops pursuing the ones He made. Every time humanity fell, He was already there, reaching back. The serpent's lie that God is withholding something from you is the oldest deception in history, and it is still the one that stalls faith and silences prayer today. But the truth stands firm: you were made in His image, seated with Christ in heavenly places, and positioned not for a journey toward victory but for a life that flows from it. Let your faith be energized today not by trying harder, but by resting deeper in the love of the One who never stopped coming toward you.
Reflect on This
In what areas of your life have you unknowingly been doubting God's goodness, perhaps viewing your circumstances as proof that He does not fully care or that He is withholding from you?
If faith works through love, what does it mean practically for you to spend time receiving God's love rather than only striving to believe harder?
Prayer
Father, I declare that You are love. Not just loving, but love itself. Yesterday, today, and forever, You are unchanged. I receive Your love into every part of my heart right now. I declare that my faith is energized by knowing You, by knowing that You have already seated me in heavenly places in Christ, that You have already made full provision for everything I need. I renounce every whisper that says You are withholding, that You are distant, or that my lack is proof of Your absence. You came looking for Adam. You came to Cain. You came to Noah. You are coming to me. I am already positioned in victory, and I receive it now. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Key Takeaways
God is not merely loving; He is love itself, unchanging and ever-present toward His people.
Faith works through love, meaning effective faith is energized by a genuine knowing of God's love, not by religious effort alone.
The root of Adam and Eve's fall was doubting God's goodness, and that same doubt is the root of spiritual stagnation today.
The Christian life does not move toward victory; it begins from the position of victory already established in Christ.
God has consistently pursued humanity throughout history, from the Garden to Moses to Samuel, always coming back with love and invitation.
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To dive deeper into this powerful message, watch the full sermon on our YouTube video below.
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