Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: There are three words at the heart of today's message. Not a slogan, not a bumper sticker, but a declaration that has the power to reorient your entire life: God is love.

It sounds so simple, but how do we wrap our minds around the love of God? Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll surveys the Bible, guiding us toward an understanding of divine love that's both theologically honest and deeply personal. Whatever you're carrying today, whatever you've done or left undone, this is for you. Chuck titled his message, The Love of God.

Chuck Swindoll: On your way toward the New Testament, stop off at Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 3. The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness." We're getting close to unconditional here, aren't we?

There are moments—and I'm going to be real candid here and vulnerable—there are moments I'm sort of overwhelmed with the love of my wife for me. She's been far more faithful to tell me about her love for me than I have to say it to her.

It was a few weeks ago, a hot summer day, and her car had gotten dirty in the rainstorm. The clouds had gone away and the sun had come out. It was Saturday morning and I thought, I need to get her car cleaned up for her. So I sat down in her car and I could smell her perfume that lingered in her car. In one of those unusual moments, I just thought, man, I love this woman.

So I got a little Post-it and I write on it, "I love you." And I thought, okay, I can do better than that. So I'm going to write a little bigger so she won't miss it. And I wrote, "I love you," and I underscored love. And then I thought, well, I'm going to fill the whole page. So I did: "I love you!" and I just filled the whole thing and I stuck it on her dashboard.

So I took the car to have it cleaned and forgot that I'd stuck it on the dashboard. So those people cleaning that car, boy, did they clean that car. When I got back in it, the guy who was giving me the keys at this little joint said, "Hey, nice note."

What may not surprise you is about three weeks later, which was yesterday morning, I got in the car to do it again, and that note is still on the dashboard. Why? Because there's something about knowing you're loved that covers up everything else. It's an everlasting love.

He writes that love note to you in a dozen different ways. It's just the world being what it is, we misread it because the culture teaches us that if things are going well, then that proves somebody loves us. With God, whether it is well or hard, whether it is life or death, whether you feel like it or deserve to hear it, or on the opposite extreme, you're the last one he ought to be saying it to, certainly in your neighborhood, it's still true. He loves you.

It's a love so great that he put his Son on a cross for us. You talk about love. John chapter 3, verse 14: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life." Imagine it, dads. Imagine it, mothers. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

He gave his Son to whom? To the world. That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. How good is that? He so loved us that he knew there could never be a relationship as long as we operate on our own. I mean, look at our lives. You talk about a mess. You talk about baggage and garbage. If we could know the secrets of the people in this room, there'd be scandal spread all over this city.

God knows all of the secrets, and he hasn't yet regretted putting his Son on that cross for us. Why? Because it's the only way he could ever have relationship. When you love someone, you want a relationship with them. He so loved the world. Are you part of the world? Last time I checked, if you wonder, do this: breathe. And if you feel air, you're part of the world. Okay? If you question that, do it at a mirror. If a mirror fogs over, you're part of the world. Okay? You're alive.

He so loved you. He didn't loan you his Son. He didn't make a bargain that if you clean up your life, his Son's death will help you out. He gave his Son. He gave his Son. You have a son? You have a daughter? Imagine that. I think I love people deeply until I think about that. Chances are good I wouldn't sacrifice my son or daughter for any of those people. God did it for all of us. He so loved you and me that he gave him so that what? So that we will never perish, but on the other hand, have life like him, eternal kind of life.

I left out the most important part: whoever believes in him. That's it. Don't have to clean up your life. You can't if you tried. You have to believe in him. That's called the gospel. That's good news. He died for you on a cross, and you believe in him, you have eternal life with God, and a whole new beginning starts from the inside out. Goodness knows we need help from the inside out.

You say, but I'm not a follower of Jesus. How can I be sure of that? Listen to the words of another. He writes this: "I recently overheard a talk show host attempting to give a caller an ego boost. 'God loves you for what you are. You must see yourself as something special. After all, you are special to God.' But that misses the whole point," he writes. "God does not love us for what we are. He loves us in spite of what we are. Now there's a little hope."

You don't have to measure up for him to say you're among those that are loved. It's because you can't measure up that makes his love so special. You're not the one special. I'm not the one that's special. God is special. His Son is special. "It is only his love and his grace," this man writes, "that gives our lives any significance at all."

Maybe you're thinking it's a pretty harsh analysis to say there's nothing special about me. In case that's your response, look at Romans chapter 3. This is a sort of autopsy. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. It's an autopsy of our inner being. It cuts down where no surgeon's scalpel can reach. In case you need the reminder, look at what it says in verse 10 of Romans 3: "As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good," that means in our own flesh, "not even one."

Now the autopsy: the throat an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving. Verse 14: their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

I wanted that to be the black backdrop, the dark truth before you look at Romans 5:8. Look at this. In light of all of that, all of the things he has said about the throat, the tongue, the lips, the mouth, the feet, the path, all of them wrong direction, wrong motives, wrong actions. But look at verse 8 of Romans 5: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

That is the brilliant diamond that sits in the backdrop of Romans chapter 3. It is resplendent in beauty. It stands in stark contrast to who we are, to how we respond in life, to, well, it's just almost more than we can take in. We need to get our theology straight when it comes to our culture. No one is righteous. No one understands without divine assistance. No one seeks God voluntarily. No one turns toward him. We all in our nature turn away from him.

You'll always have that nature turning away from him. At the weak moments, you will find yourself doubting him and resisting his will. And yet, he loves us in spite of all the baggage and garbage we bring out of our culture and life before him. Now, I decided to do something very different, because I think some of you might remember it better if I do it this way. I want to read you a story and then I want to read you a statement. I want you to hear the story as if you're hearing it for the first time.

I'm not going to tell you where it is. I just want you to hear the story. I want you to put yourself in the story. It's a story of a father's love on behalf of a son who didn't deserve it and had spurned it, but the father never walked away. Put yourself in the story.

There was once a father who had two sons. The younger son said to his father, "Father, I want right now what's coming to me." So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine through that country, and he began to hurt.

So he signed on with a citizen there, who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corn cobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. That brought him to his senses. He said, "All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day and here I am starving to death. I'm going to go back to my father."

I love that line. I'm not going to go back to my home, to my neighborhood, to my room, to my friends, to my bed, to the place of comfort where I can get a shower, get cleaned up. I'm going to go back to whom? My father. That's a father's love. It never dawns on him that he can't.

"I'm going to go back to my father. I'll say to him, 'Father, I've sinned against God and I've sinned before you, and I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.'" He got right up and went home to his father, it says again. While he was still a long way off, the great old dad, standing there waiting, realizing it's his boy. While he was a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and repeatedly kissed him. Is that good or what?

Watch this happen now. The father is just all over the boy. And this boy stinks. This boy is dirty. And he starts his speech: "Father, I've sinned against God and I've sinned before you and I don't deserve—" "Stop," said the dad. Father wasn't listening. He called to the servants and said, "Quick, bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Get that grain-fed heifer and we'll roast it. We're going to have a feast. We're going to have a wonderful time. My son is here, given up for dead and now alive, given up for lost and now found."

And they began to have a wonderful time. And I am crazy about that story because that's you and me in our worst moment, feeling like we ought to run in the other direction knowing we should go back to the one who made us. And what draws us to him is his love for us. His love for us. And nothing can separate us from that love.

Listen to the statement: "With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would even dare to point a finger? The one who died for us, who was raised to life for us, is in the presence of God at this moment sticking up for us.

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love? There is no way. Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in the scriptures. None of this phases us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable, absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way Jesus our Master has embraced us."

Amen? How marvelous, how wonderful is our Savior's love for us. We've sung it since little kids. "Jesus loves me," what? "This I know." Why? "'Cause the Bible tells me so." All our lives and here we are adults, still doubting it.

Now I have poured with passion myself into this message, and it's time for you to respond. Okay? If you really believe that God loves you, stand to your feet right now. Just stand there. Okay? I'm going to have to hold you back right now. If you're sitting in a wheelchair and you can't stand, lift your hands up. Here we go. It's going to be the greatest altar call in the history of Stonebriar Church right now.

Say it after me: God loves me.

Audience: God loves me.

Chuck Swindoll: Say it like you mean it: God loves me.

Audience: God loves me.

Chuck Swindoll: Together: God loves us.

Audience: God loves us.

Chuck Swindoll: No matter what: God loves us.

Audience: No matter what, God loves us.

Chuck Swindoll: I am loved by God.

Audience: I am loved by God.

Chuck Swindoll: Listen to me. Listen. In the darkest night, when the bottom has dropped out of your life, remember what you said. God loves you. There'll never be a time in your existence when he will stop loving you. Now the part that some of you would have to say for the first time: I believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior. Say that.

Audience: I believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior.

Chuck Swindoll: The reason that's significant is because apart from him, you can't relate to the one who loves you. And he waits. He waits patiently. And some of you for the first time in your life have made a statement like that. God bless you for that. God loves me. Here we go again.

Audience: God loves me.

Chuck Swindoll: God loves us.

Audience: God loves us.

Chuck Swindoll: God loves you.

Audience: God loves you.

Chuck Swindoll: Thank you, Lord, for loving me.

Audience: Thank you, Lord, for loving me.

Chuck Swindoll: Will you please remember this? When everybody's gone home, you're alone and nobody's around, the sun has gone down, and your mind begins to play tricks on you, and the enemy says you can't believe that. You just said it. And you have never told yourself more truth than you did in those three words. We've sung it since we were kids: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Our Father, today we have needed to hear this and we embrace it. It is a truth we have taken for granted to the point that it no longer has impacted us as it should. Thank you for your unconditional, undying, everlasting love. Thank you that it pervades our being. It is at work within us, whether we are sleeping or awake, whether we are obeying or disobeying, whether we are strong or weak, whether we are healthy or sick, whether we are in the places we wish to be or find ourselves in places we feel awkward, uneasy, like a hospital, like a funeral home, like all alone and we have just come through a failure and we're broken.

Remind us, O God, that you love us. And may we live in light of that in such a way that it does make a difference. For the most important thing about us is what we think about you. And today, we in turn, we love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Everybody said.

Audience: Amen.

Bill Meyer: The most important thing about you isn't your failures, your history, or what you think of yourself. It's what you think about God and what he thinks about you. Today, Chuck Swindoll reminded us he loves you, forever and without condition. Our topic is the love of God, and it's just one of 12 attributes in this series called How Great Is Our God.

To explore this essential topic on your own, Insight for Living offers practical Bible study tools that will help you do exactly that. In fact, there's a bundle of resources for this series so the journey doesn't end when the program does. The Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook is one of those tools. It's been carefully crafted for personal discovery, the kind of resource that opens up your Bible in a whole new way. With guided questions, contextual notes, and room to record what God speaks to you directly, it's a Bible study that stays with you.

You can also add the full collection of 12 messages on CD or MP3. To purchase these resources right now, go to insight.org/offer. And now, here's Chuck.

Chuck Swindoll: My mother was a wise woman, relentless, too. From the time I was old enough to string sentences together, she was pressing scripture into me. "Memorize this. Learn that. Hide it in your heart." Honestly, when you're young and restless and there are a thousand other things competing for your attention, a mother's insistence on scripture memory can feel, well, a little annoying. But oh, how wise she was, because here I am decades later with eyes that don't cooperate the way they used to.

The pages of my beloved Bible—dog-eared, marked up, worn soft from a lifetime of handling—are nearly impossible for me to read now. But those promises, they come to my lips like sweet honey, spontaneously, effortlessly, right when I need them most. A friend told me recently that my body may be past 90, but my mind still responds like a 40-year-old. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, but I'll take it.

And I'll tell you why it's true to whatever extent it is. It's because God's Word is hidden in my heart, deeply, permanently. And nothing—not age, not failing eyesight, not the relentless march of time—can reach in and take it out. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of God abides forever. I believe that today more than I've ever believed it in my life. And that's precisely why I refuse to grow weary in well-doing.

We have something the world is desperately searching for: hope, real hope. Not optimism, not positive thinking. The timeless, unshakable hope of the cross we proclaim. As June 30th approaches, don't wait. Your gift plants the seed of God's Word in fertile soil all over this world. What are you waiting for? Let's tell them together, because there is indeed hope.

Bill Meyer: Yes, the world needs the right direction. To respond to Chuck Swindoll, call us at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/donate. Plus, when you respond with a much-appreciated gift today, we'll say thanks by providing a brand new booklet from Chuck. It's called The Cross We Proclaim.

In this printed message, Chuck draws from Paul's letter to the Corinthians to show how easy it is to live with great energy but be going in the right direction. Whether chasing achievement, reputation, or religious performance, the cross alone has the power to reorient your life. We'd love to send you The Cross We Proclaim. To send a check in the mail, just address your donation to: Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034. You can also call us at 800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org/donate.

I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll describes one of his favorite attributes of God: his grace. That's Thursday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, The Love of God, was copyrighted in 2008, 2009, 2016, 2019, and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.