Today I would like to share a personal experience, one of my 'God stories'. I believe that this experience has a message for all of us. This gave me absolute proof of the one thing that I positively know for sure, that God loves us all more than we can really ever know. The details of this is included in my book, My Extraordinary Walk, in Chapter 15, Extreme Love.
This all started with a prayer. I had been feeling unloved by the people around me. I believed that it was because I wasn't loving enough. I began to think that if I could be more loving to them that maybe I would receive more love in return. But I didn't know how to do it. I kept to myself a lot and I never had many friends. So I began to pray for God to show me His love. Thinking that if I felt His love that I could use that to be more loving to my brothers and sisters.
I am not sure how long I had been talking to God about this but I don't think it had been very
long at all. One day as I was driving I became overwhelmed with feelings of 'extreme love' as I looked at different people that I drove by. The feelings would diminish as I looked away but would intensify again with each person I laid my eyes on. Words really cannot fully express what I felt. It was so much love, it just swelled in my chest. This feeling was the most amazing and powerful thing that I ever felt and I couldn't take it. With each person I saw I felt like I would actually burst or explode. I could not contain it and I quickly had to look away from each person. Eventually driving with my eyes strait ahead avoiding catching a glance of anyone else.
I really don't know how I was even able to drive. But God is so good, He knew that this would overwhelm me and knew that I was driving. This experience just happened to occur as I was driving through downtown Anderson and anyone who has ever driven through this area knows that the speed limit drops drastically. So I was probably driving 10-15 miles per hour. The only part of my drive home where I would be doing so.
Now to me the most significant thing was the people that I saw. They were all so diverse. There were people from all walks of life. I remember a couple that appeared homeless, they had huge backpacks on their backs. I saw a handicapped man in a wheelchair, a young boy, women, men, white and black. None of these people I had ever seen before and I didn't know a thing about any of them. But who they were and what they had done in and with their lives did not matter. God's feelings for them was all the same.
He loved them all to an extent that I was not even able to receive. He loved them all immensely. He loves us all like that. It doesn't make sense to me and I cannot even understand why He would love us so much. We are all imperfect and even as I write this, I don't feel deserving. But the truth still remains He does. So if I don't know nothing else as a fact in this world, and even though I cannot understand it, I know for sure that He loves us all more than any of us will ever know.
1 John 4:16 - And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love
Job 34:19 who shows no partiality to princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands? Psalm 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. ~ Augustine
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