God has been teaching me about so much this year. I continue to be amazed by Him and I can just sit in awe in His presence. One thing that God has taught me this year is how much He loves us. And how much He longs for a deep intimate relationship with each one of us.

In this world, people are loved based on their performance. When someone pleases us or we appreciate what they do, we often use the word �elove�f to describe our response. If someone questions our performance or our behavior we start to feel inadequate, it sometimes feels like they are attacking our sense of worth and our value. But the truth is that all of us are inadequate, and all of us are broken. The message of the Gospel is that our worth and our value is not tied to our performance. It is tied to the fact that God loves us beyond measure. God�fs love is unconditional. Knowing that God�fs love has nothing to do with our performance should be freeing. You don�ft have to constantly wonder if God is going to abandon you because you mess up. You don�ft have to worry that God might change His mind about you because of your poor performance. God already knows the worst about each of us�c and He�fs the one that CHOSE to love you! We should delight in that!

There are so many passages that show us how much God loves us, Romans 8 being one of them. It says that that neither death nor life, angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is an incedible promise. No matter what we do, no matter what anyone does to us, no matter what happens that there is nothing that will cause our God to love us any less. We can turn our back on God, we can ignore God, you can reject a relationship with Him but nothing will cause Him to love you any less because you can�ft get away from God�fs love. He will continue to pursue a relationship with you. He is always there holding out His hand for you.

Isaiah 43:2 reads, �gWhen you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up, the flames will not consume you.�h God doesn�ft promise to keep up from troubles, or always make our lives comfortable. Instead, God promises to always be there in times of trouble. God uses these trials for good, in ways that we can�ft understand while we are going through them. We can always count on the fact that God will be there, regardless of the way things may look to us.

one of the places where I see God is in nature, especially in red-orange trees during fall J

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