The Importance of Knowing God Loves Me (1)

We cannot be thankful to God until we know that he loves us in Christ. Who can be thankful to someone he doesn't know? It is a duty to joy in the Lord as our portion, but we must be certain of his love first. What joy and cheerfulness can come without the love of God shining upon us and enlarging our hearts to joy? As the shining of the sun in the springtime enlarges the spirit of the birds to sing, so proportionately the understanding of the sweet love of God in Christ enlarges the spirit of a man and makes him full of joy and thanksgiving. He breaks forth into joy, so that his whole life is a matter of joy and thanksgiving.
In suffering any cross, any opposition, who will endure to lose his temporal goods, his life and liberty, to be restrained in anyway, who doesn't know that God loves them? What sets us to suffer anything for God? Knowing that he loves us. What makes a man willing to die and yield up his soul to God? Knowing that he yields his soul to a Father who loves him and will save his soul. Can a man be willing to leave his home here on earth, when he doesn't know whether he is going to a better one? Can a man commend his soul to one that he doesn't know to be his friend? No! Oh, to be like Simeon, 'Lord, let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen your salvation' (Luke 2:29). Does not all joy and comfort come from the love of God in Christ? We can neither have grace, nor joy, nor suffer anything with thankfulness, nor end our days with joy and comfort, until we are assured that we are in the covenant of grace and know that God loves us.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Matchless Love and Inbeing, Works, vol. 6, p. 388
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