Ephesians 1:3-6 • The Father's Love, Longer Than...
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Angie sings so beautifully of our desire to do God's will and have it be fulfilled in our lives.
We believe that He tells us His will in His Word.
Let me ask that you'd turn there to Ephesians 1, Ephesians 1 verses 3-6.
Good word for some of you today: In our entire sermon today, we'll be looking at just one sentence.
[Laughter]
Better: Just one-third of one sentence.
Now the bad news: It's the longest sentence in the Bible.
[Laughter]
I mean, fair is fair.
Just a few weeks ago we looked at the shortest chapter in the Bible, so now we have to look at the longest sentence in the Bible.
It goes on over two hundred words.
Paul, the apostle, is so excited that he is just gushing, as it were, with truths that can't be stopped by social niceties like periods.
[Laughter]
What's he so excited about?
Well, what he told us about last week as we were studying: that God has turned him around; that he was hell-bent and hell-bound and by a work of amazing grace God has turned him around.
And now the apostle Paul is speaking of that in terms so forceful that he just can't be stopped.
He said, "I can't believe it.
God knew me before I was born.
He chose me before the foundation of the world; He predestined me."
And we kind of, "Paul, predestined?"
We'll get upset with those words.
He says, "Tough."
[Laughter]
"God was working in my behalf."
Now, listen, when we read words in the Bible like "choose" and "predestine," no mystery.
The church has debated precisely what those words mean for generations.
And if you're one who struggles with why would God say things precisely this way, you're not alone.
I shared with you before that my father was a lay Baptist minister who very much emphasized the sovereignty of God in our salvation.
My mother was raised Free Methodist and at least initially in her Christian walk very much wanted us to talk about free choice and human will.
And I will tell you, I went to seminary precisely to try to find the resolution between divine sovereignty and human responsibility, which is why I stayed there only thirty years.
[Laughter]
And I must tell you: I don't have it entirely solved yet.
But I do have some perspective that I would like to share with you today.
How do we approach these notions that we know have to be addressed of divine sovereignty and human responsibility?
Maybe for those of you who are engineers and scientists and educators, we can go down this path.
Can you just think of how you would answer this question: Does light travel in particles or waves?
Both.
Okay, is water a liquid, a gas or a solid?
[Murmuring]
Well, all of those.
Okay, is God one or three?
[Murmuring]
Yes.
Is Jesus human or divine?
[Murmuring]
You know, you're not making much sense today.
[Laughter]
Because you recognize as I recognize that answers that seem to be contrary are only going to be reconciled if you give the context of the question.
So if I say to you, "What is the nature of water at zero degrees?" you'd say, "Well, now I know; that's a solid."
What's the nature of water at seventy degrees?
Well, I know that's a liquid.
Now the question becomes: How do we deal with God when He talks about a word like predestination?
I will tell you that unless you recognize that the apostle Paul is talking about that term in the context of the Fatherhood of God, we will be very messed up.
I mean, even John Calvin, who sometimes gets the bad rap of emphasizing predestination too much, say, "If you do not talk about predestination in the context of God's Fatherhood, you will only do mischief."
I mean, we understand why the apostle Paul would be saying for God that He loved us before the foundations of the world were laid if we talk in terms of God's Fatherhood.
>>> Fathers, when did you start loving your child?
When he was five?
When he was thirty-five?
[Laughter]
>>> No, when did we start loving our children?
We'd say, "Well, before they were even born, while they were still in the womb."
Well, God is an eternal Father, and He operates on an eternal plane.
And what He is saying through the apostle in this passage is: "Before you were born, I knew you.
And before the foundations of the world were laid, I loved you."
That Fathering of God is what we need to understand as we read this passage of Scripture.
Let me ask that you stand as we honor God's Word.
And I will read to you Ephesians 1 verses 3-6, as Paul talks about the implications of our eternal Father.
Ephesians 1:3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, we humbly say to You that Your ways are not our ways and Your glory beyond our full comprehension.
And, yet, You tell us things in Your Word that while they stretch us are meant to help us.
So help us this day to understand why words that so challenge us are actually meant to comfort and heal, restore and strengthen us.
Give us by Your Holy Spirit insight into Your Word this day we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
When my oldest son, Colin, was in high school in his senior year, our high school had just started a wrestling program.
And, yet, Colin in that particular year made it through districts and regionals and ultimately to the state championship.
We were really tickled and pleased that he did so well so soon.
But there was a problem: The date of the state championship was also the date that Colin was required to be at a particular college to compete for a scholarship that if he won would be a full ride.
And the college would not let him come on any other date than that date.
Now, you parents know that we could not say to our son who had trained so well, fought so hard and gone so far, "You can't go to the state championships because we want to save some money."
[Laughter]
I mean, he was going to go.
But we did come up with a plan.
Here was our plan.
We said, "Alright, there are many rounds in the state championship."
And we began to calculate if he did not go very far, then there was still time to get in the car, drive three states and get to the college that we wanted to go to.
Pretty good plan.
Here's the problem: How do you pray?
[Laughter]
I mean, you can't pray for your son to lose.
But you want the scholarship.
[Laughter]
So what do you pray for?
Well, I will tell you: We struggled with that.
But once we got to the state championship, there was no question what a father did.
You know what I mean?
When you're in the coliseum and there are thousands of people looking on your son, he's wrestling on the mat with a well-muscled opponent, you know as a father exactly what you're going to say.
You're going to say, "Colin, get him!
Squeeze him!
Squash him!"
[Laughter]
You want him to win.
It may offend the people around you the way you shout as a father of your father's love.
[Laughter]
But you just say, "Tough, cause I want my child to know: You're mine; I'm for you.
I don't care how hard the struggle; I'm with ya."
That's what God is saying to you and me in Ephesians 1.
Now, just think about it.
Here are Ephesian Christians who are gathering.
They are from pagan roots.
They are struggling with cult practices and immorality in a city that doesn't care anything about the things of God.
It must be so hard to walk with God.
And, yet, God shouts from the heights to the people who are wrestling, "You are mine.
I love you.
I'm going to love you eternally, and I have loved you eternally."
And while we'll struggle to make sense of that, if you put it in the context of the Fatherhood of God, it makes perfect sense.
He is going to shout His care to assure them and us that He has always and will always love us, regardless of the struggles that we may be facing.
How are we being assured of the Father's love in this passage?
First, we are simply assured that we are being blessed with His child's blessing.
Look at verse 3.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."
We have been blessed in Christ.
Last week I mentioned to you that there is that language of union with Christ that the apostle Paul is so serious about he mentions it over two hundred times in his letters.
And in this one long sentence that goes from verse 3 through the end of verse 14, I know there are periods in your English bibles, but in the Greek there is no period till the end of verse 14.
In that one sentence, he talks about our being united to Christ twelve times.
He is serious about this.
Why?
What would it mean to be united to Christ?
Well, then--, you have to ask: Well, who is that Christ to whom we are united?
And He is described for us a little bit later in the same chapter.
If you look in your bibles at verse 20, you'll see it.
Halfway through verse 20, we are told about what God has done in and for Christ.
It says this: "He raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
And put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, as head over all things to the church."
Christ is pictured here as seated at the right hand of God and in that place of privilege with power over all things, not only in the present age but in the age to come.
And we are united to Him.
What would that mean?
It means as you perceive every power, every authority, every entity in this world, you recognize it's oriented to and actually derivative of the power of Jesus Christ whom God has blessed with that seat of privilege.
The beauty of a sunset, the power of a storm, the wonder of love's passion, the purity of a child's prayer, the glory of God on display: It is all made possible by Christ who is seated at the right hand of God.
And if we are in Him, united to Him, not only surrounded by His goodness but taking power from Him, it means all that beauty and power and glory is ours to share.
If we truly capture the significance of it, there should be a song that's kind of going on in your brain right now.
If all of earth's beauty and power and wonder is ours to share in Christ, we should be singing.
7 Heaven, I'm in heaven 7 7
I'm not going to dance.
[Laughter]
But it's actually what Paul says.
Remember?
He says, verse 3 again, "God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."
Now, one way you might read that is to say that Jesus is up in heaven in the heavenly places blessing us down here.
It's actually not what he's saying.
If Christ is seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places and we are united to Him, where are we?
We're in the heavenly places.
Now, I know that seems odd and that's strange, but it's actually said even more clearly in chapter 2 and verse 6 if you'll look there.
In chapter 2 in verse 6, coming out from the truths that are being said in verse 5, it says, "We were dead in our trespasses and God has made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and God raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
Now, isn't that amazing?
Seated, past tense.
God has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places.
And you say, "Wait, I'm just right here in Grace Church in Peoria, Illinois.
How could I already be seated in heavenly places?"
Because the promise of God that we're united to Christ has so much been certain and secured that the reality is already ours even though we are not there yet.
Remember, time before God is spread out as a map, so that God sees the end from the beginning.
And He already identifies us by our heavenly destination.
And what's that meant to mean is that we are already blessed by that heavenly reality.
Now, how can you be blessed by a reality that you're not living quite yet?
I thought of it some years ago when I was with my children at our cabin in Missouri.
And it's in a dense set of woods, and we kind of as a family like taking hikes.
And so we took a hike one afternoon and got fairly far away from the cabin, and as the dusk was closing in, I began to recognize we were going to lose the path and the normal landmarks that we saw to orient ourselves to get back to the cabin.
And so to try to get back before dark, we just started dead lining through the woods.
And it got darker and darker.
And the kids began to worry.
"Dad, are we lost?"
"Oh, no.
I got it."
[Laughter]
And inside I'm thinking, "We're lost."
[Laughter]
And just as I was about to turn to the kids and confess that we were lost, just in that very turning, I saw the light of our cabin through the trees.
Now, we weren't home yet.
But you know what?
I was already at peace.
We were already there in terms of the reality's experience we could begin to have, even though it was not fully our experience of being inside the cabin yet.
If God is saying to His people, "You are mine and I have secured you for heavenly blessings and where Christ is seated because you're with Him you're already there," then we recognize even this day when we face struggles of disease and uncertainty and sin and family pain that while this is here I have a security that is guaranteed by God.
By virtue of my union with Christ, I'm already able to say, "Heaven is my home, and those blessings are mine."
And I begin to partake of them now so that I'm already there.
I know it sounds like a song from Lonestar.
But it's true.
By faith I'm already there.
And that reality is giving me strength and security that I need for now as a child of the Father who's making me promises of a home with His Son.
But that's looking forward.
And you must recognize if this map of time is spread out before God, He's not only seeing the end: He sees the beginning.
And that's verse 4.
Remember what it said there is chapter 1 of Ephesians?
It's saying, not only have we been blessed with Christ in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, but this is "even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him."
God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him.
It's just as the map of time goes out to the future, it also goes out to the past.
And God is reminding us that His love didn't just start this day but long, long ago.
In Paul's letter to Titus, he doesn't even go back as far as the foundation of the world: He says that we were loved before time began.
For what purpose?
"God chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless."
Something is being taken away, and something is being given.
Do you catch that?
God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be blameless.
Blame is the accusation of guilt.
And there could be just accusation against us for our sin against a holy God, but that blame has been taken away by the work of Jesus Christ who suffered on the cross, taking the penalty for our sin.
But the beauty of that is it's just half the gospel.
Half the gospel is that our sin is taken away.
The other half is that we are holy before God: that because we're united to Christ not only has our guilt been taken away but the holiness that is His has been given to us.
We are robed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
So this love that is ours from before the beginning of the world is for those who are holy and blameless, holy and as blameless as Jesus Christ by the work of God.
And this great work of salvation is something that God comprehended, planned and brought about before we could accomplish it ourselves.
Now, I know that sets up all kinds of logical struggle in our minds, but if you have been saved from your sin, if you knew that you were hell-bent and that was to be your home but God rescued you, you--, somewhere in you you know that we are going to say, "God, You saved me."
I think of the way that Christian leader Lyle Dorsett explains it.
Some of you know him, high up in Crusade and other organizations.
He talks about his salvation in terms that may be closer to home than we may want to read.
He says this: "During the first six years of my marriage, I taught full time at a university and pursued research.
Promotions came quickly and publications and grants.
But despite the blessings of a lovely wife and two children and professional success, no rest came to my soul.
To fill the void, I began to drink heavily.
One evening, my wife implored me not to drink in front of the children.
My answer was to stomp out and find a bar and drink until closing time.
I left armed with a six pack and drove up a winding mountain road, stopped at an overlook and blacked out.
The next morning, I found myself on a dirt road at the bottom of that dangerous mountain next to a cemetery and no memory of how I got down.
Despite the hangover, I recognized I had experienced something of a miracle.
And in utter desperation, I cried out, 'Lord, if You are there, please save me.'
After that, I moved many times, made countless mistakes, but the Lord never gave up on me.
He gradually brought healing and restored the years the locusts had eaten.
The most humbling and reassuring lesson coming now from at least three-quarters of a century of looking back over my life is the glance of God's persistence in drawing me to Himself.
Now I know God was always way out in front of me, initiating life-giving knowledge of Himself.
It was He who pursued me and sustained the relationship when I strayed and doubted and sometimes deliberately moved to the far country.
It's all grace: unearned, undeserved, unpayable grace."
Listen, I can't explain it all, but I know that when you and I stand before God in His heaven, we are not going to say when He says, "Why should I let you in?" we're not going to say, "Because, God, I made a great choice."
We are going to say, "Because, God, You rescued me."
And the point that Paul is making in this particular passage is that's not just passive: God is actively working on behalf of those that He loves.
And so he says words that we struggle with.
Verse 5, "He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will."
I have kids right now who are in that path of adoption.
And as they are seeking to adopt, I must tell you that everything in them is striving for that child: the reports they fill out, the examinations they go through, the things they look at, what they submit themselves to.
This longing for a child means it brings out everything in them.
Paul is saying, "God predestined us toward adoption.
He was working in our behalf."
I can't exactly tell you what all of that means, but I heard it expressed so well some years ago in a Sunday night meeting where people were giving their testimonies.
And a man who was new to our church stood up.
And he'd obviously had kind of some military gruffness in his background.
And he stood up and he said, "It's a darn good thing that God saved me, cause I was going to hell."
And he didn't use the word "darn."
[Laughter]
And there were kind of gasps from around the church.
But you have to see: It was perfect.
Everything in him was saying, "I didn't deserve this.
I didn't earn this.
I was going that-a-way.
And God did something to change me that I did not have control of.
I didn't fix it.
God fixed me."
And that reality is what he was totally thankful for, so that he could say what Paul is saying here at the end of verse 5 and toward the beginning of 6: "This is to the praise of his glorious grace."
Look what God did.
And the beauty and the wonder of that is it actually gives us the security we need.
Because what we recognize what God is saying to you and me despite our undeserving, our going a different direction, our inability to claim Him, is that He is our Father.
I mean, ultimately the assurance that we have is that we have the same Father that Jesus has.
That's what's being said here.
After all, what does predestination sometimes mean to people?
I mean, you know.
You know, I know, the arguments.
If you accept predestination it means that we're all puppets; that, you know, God is just kind of pulling strings, "Say that you love Me," alright, you get into heaven; pulling strings, "Say that you don't love Me," alright, you go to hell.
Is this passage saying that we're puppets?
No, we are predestined to be adopted as sons, as the children of God.
Do you remember how Paul says it in Romans 8 and verse 29?
"That God predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son, that we would be--, that He would be the firstborn among many brothers."
I'm being called to be like Christ.
Christ is no puppet.
You know how I ultimately know I'm not a puppet?
I sin.
Oh, no, you don't.
Oh, yes, I do.
[Laughter]
And that's not of God.
I mean, this letter is so assuring me that we're not simply puppets and whatever way that God is orchestrating and working our lives and our future and our paths to make us love Him when we would not have done it on our own and whatever that--, it's not puppetry.
And I know that because this is a letter full of responsibility.
Over and over again he's telling us how we are to be responding to Him.
If your bibles are still open, look at chapter 4, just the very first verse.
Paul is in prison.
He can't control much of anything.
But he's writing to other people and he says in chapter 4 and verse 1, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling of which you have been called."
Now, that would be totally irrelevant if we're just puppets.
Why would he urge any responsibility, given any instruction if we are just somehow under the influence of some sort of brute force of fatalism?
The fact that he gives instruction means that there's some part of human responsibility, that the same apostle who's talking about predestination is willing to talk to us about our responsibilities.
The Westminster Confession when it tries to talk about these hard concepts, said, "In whatever way that God predetermines His will, He does no violence to the will of the creature."
Now, I can't make sense of that entirely.
I do recognize that when God is talking about His Fatherhood, He's saying, "I loved you before the world began."
And when He is talking about our responsibility, He says, "Now that you know Me, walk with Me."
And He's calling my heart to respond to His goodness and grace.
And how all those things fit together, I think we'll know more when we get to heaven.
Sometimes I think of it this way: You know, one of my favorite activities is fishing in my kayak in the clear water streams of Southern Missouri or Colorado.
And when I'm in my kayak fishing, I must tell you that sometimes I'm going straight down and sometimes I'm going across and sometimes I'm going acro--, and sometimes I'm going backwards.
But no matter what way I'm exerting my abilities and my intentions, there's an inevitability to the stream: It's taking me where it wants me to go.
And I recognize in our lives that there's so much effort and energy that we're expressing and expected to express, but God is assuring His people despite our struggles, despite our weaknesses, there is an inevitability to His love.
Like this mighty river in our lives, God is taking us to the eternal destiny He intends because He's such a good Father.
He doesn't stop loving us when we fail.
He didn't start losing us just because we said the right words sometime.
He has an eternal plan with an eternal destiny.
Now, I recognize that still our question is: Are we puppets?
And that's not just a question about responsibility.
Ultimately, the question is answered because of relationships.
He says we are united to the one who is Beloved.
He's expressing how great is His love.
If I were just Pinocchio, if I were just an automaton, if I were just some sort of Stepford child, how could He love somebody who had no will, no autonomy whatsoever?
God is in fact indicating to us that He loves us as much as He loves His own Son so that we will recognize the essence of this chapter is to communicate His love is unending.
Now, did you catch it right at the beginning of the service, the prelude that I asked Noah to play?
Dan Fogelberg, Peoria native, right?
The popular guitarist, probably came to fame on the song "Longer Than."
"Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than they've been stars up in the heaven, I've been in love with you."
What is God saying to you and me in this chapter?
Longer than there've been stars up in the heaven, your heavenly Father has loved you.
It's answering key questions for us to see the scriptures that way.
One is, you know, just are we fatalists?
You know, God's just going to do what God's going to do.
"Que sera, sera."
It's not the way the scriptures are addressing us.
I love you.
This is not brute force.
This is a Father's heart, and He is expressing to us what we need to know in the circumstances of our extremity.
It's not the full story.
It's not everything we need to know.
But if the question is does He love me still, the question is He will love you forever because He has loved you forever.
And that's the context of the Fatherhood of God.
Now, I know there are questions that we all still have.
What if I'm not predestined?
Heard that question?
What if I'm not predestined?
The question is reflecting the worry that even if I love Him, even if I long for Him, it may not matter, because I may not be one of the chosen.
I want to be careful when I say this, but I want you to know that if your question is, "Is my love for Him irrelevant?" the answer is the question itself is irrelevant.
If you love God, why do you love God?
You know 1 John 4:19.
"We love God because he first loved us."
If your heart longs for God, there is no question that you are part of His chosen people.
If your heart longs for Him, the very evidence that He is a Father to you is that you love Him.
Apart from that, you would be dead in your transgressions and sin.
Hi love for you is what has enabled your love for Him.
If you love Him, there is no question that you have to wrestle with.
You have to understand: This passage is not meant to spark questions; it's meant to spark assurance.
If I love Him, it's the evidence of how great is His love for me, cause there's no reason He should.
But He did anyway, and my love for Him shows that He did.
Alright, what's the other question we all ask?
We all ask not only, "What if I'm not predestined?" we say, "Why aren't others chosen?"
If I'm chosen, why are not others chosen?
Well, it cannot be because they are not loved.
How do I know that?
Psalm 145: "God loves all that He has made."
John 3:16: "God so loved the world."
Now, I recognize there are different dimensions of love, but clearly the gospels are telling me as well as what the apostle and the prophets are telling me that God is loving toward all He has made.
Is it a saving love?
It's not.
And why does He provide saving love for some and not for others?
I don't know.
It may surprise you that that question is asked precisely in Romans 9 by this same apostle Paul.
Where he says, "If God chooses, why can he condemn?"
Do you remember what Paul's answer is?
By the way, he doesn't answer.
He asks the question and then does not answer it.
He simply says, "How can the vessel answer back to the potter?"
Which means it's not given to us in this life.
But we at least have some partial understanding.
If the question is, "Why are some not chosen?" believe it or not, the answer is because they may not be bad enough.
[Laughter]
After all, why were you chos--?
I mean, just think about it a little bit.
Why does God choose people in the Bible?
Why did He pick Israel?
Because they were the nicest and the best and the biggest people, right?
[Laughter]
Why did God pick Israel?
Cause they were the dinkiest, meanest people.
Right?
You're the smallest and the most stiff-necked of the people.
Wh--, why did God pick David to be King of Israel?
Cause he was the tallest, strongest, most experienced among his brothers.
Is that why?
No, because he was the least among his brothers.
That means if he was going to be king, God had to be at work.
What about just Paul?
What do you know about the apostle Paul, this one who has said, "I was foreordained before the"?
Why did God choose Paul?
Paul would tell us about himself something later.
Do you remember?
He said, "I am the chief" of what?
"I'm the chief of sinners."
If you have been chosen by God, you know something for sure: You are from the wrong side of the tracks.
[Laughter]
God's grace is to be displayed in you.
If you were good enough, if you had measured up, if you were a credit, it would be no credit to God's grace.
The fact that God has loved you despite yourself is what gives glory to His name.
And so when somebody comes to you and says, "You're a Christian?
How could you be so foolish, backward, a cave dweller?"
Well, instead of arguing with them, you might just say, "Well, that's because grace is so great.
I am what you say, but the grace of God is greater than all my sin.
God chose me not because I qualified but because it would display His grace to be merciful to someone as awful as I am."
When God is working that way, you begin to recognize the beauty of a song that He could say, "Longer there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than there've been stars up in the heaven, I've been in love with you."
I had a plan for you.
I knew the worst about you.
I know the worst to come.
But you're Mine.
And I will not let you go.
I have loved you forever, and I will love you still.
I've not answered all your questions today.
Now, listen: Some of you may want to come up and tell me some analogy that's just going to perfectly solve the question of divine responsibility--, divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
I've been at a seminary for thirty years.
I bet I can match you illustration for illustration and argument for argument.
[Laughter]
But for me, what helps so much is just thinking in the human terms of our reality: What is God saying here?
Do you know Colin, my son, did not make it very far in the state championships of the wrestling in the state of Missouri.
And so we got in the car and we drove three states and we got to the college and he won the scholarship.
Now, as he and I were driving home, we had some good moments.
And along the way, my son, who had experienced such terrible disappointment only to be followed by such tremendous reward, said at some point, "Dad, it's amazing; it's almost like God had it planned."
[Laughter]
Ya think?
[Laughter]
I haven't fixed all your questions, but you can only talk about this topic in the context of God the Father who has loved you always and will love you forever.
"Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than there've been stars up in the heaven," God says He's been in love with you.
That's good news.
Hang onto that.