“God is love.” (1 John 4:8) and “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

When we know His love, we can love Him with “all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And we can also love others in the same way. (Mark 12:30)

Jesus was the perfect representation of God’s love, the true revelation. He lived, died and rose to give us full access to love—beholding and becoming. And He showed us what a life looks like when it is lived sure in love.

The Christian life is the transformative journey of a son or daughter growing sure in God’s love – that we might become like Him.

Here are four signs along this journey that you are growing sure in God’s love…

1) YOU ARE NOT EASILY OFFENDED

While hanging suspended between heaven and earth, naked, bloodied, broken, and mocked; while oppressed by the weight of humanity’s sin, our sin, Jesus revealed the power of Love: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

Love is hard to offend. “…It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” 1 Cor 13:5

Jesus was the perfect expression of forgiveness, and when we receive the forgiveness He offers, we are set free and empowered to forgive those around us.

As you are growing sure in God’s love, you will discover that you’re not easily offended, either by wrongs done to you or by people who are lost in their sin. Instead, you will be filled with compassion, you will find that mercy and grace are close at hand, and that forgiveness has become a way of life.

2) YOU ARE NOT A REALIST

Let’s call realism what it is, socially accepted pessimism, or—for the Christian—unbelief. There are only two choices for a Christian: believe or don’t.

While realism can often appear to be practical, respectable, and wise, it’s simply unbelief. A realist would see a blind man and say, “he can’t see,” end of story. But when Jesus (Love perfectly revealed) walked the earth, the blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard, Lazarus died twice, and Jesus told death, “Thanks, but no!”

Jesus was an eternal optimist—a believer. Jesus revealed that love has an answer to every issue humanity faces. True Biblical faith believes with hope when the evidence is yet unseen. (Heb 11:1)

As you are growing sure in God’s love, you will find that you are an optimist, regardless of the circumstances. “Optimists”—or believers—choose to believe that love is always good and then live for the greater revelation. It’s called faith.

3) YOU SEE PEOPLE AS WHO THEY CAN BECOME IN CHRIST

Jesus called Peter a rock upon which He would build His Church. This was before Peter denied he knew Jesus. (Matt 16:18)

Jesus saw a generous man in Zacchaeus and treated him as though he were already living generously. This perspective released grace until Zacchaeus agreed with how Jesus saw him and became generous. (Luke 19:1-10)

Jesus forgave an adulterer and then told her to “go and sin no more.” He saw her as forgiven, and spoke that identity over her. She was no longer an adulterer. (John 8:11)

As you are growing sure in God’s love, you will begin to see and treat people as who they can become in Christ. This will release grace for them to discover the “Kindness that leads to a repentance” – a changed or renewed, mind. (Rom 2:4) 

This perspective is the invitation to be transformed through the discovery of His love.

4) YOU LOOK ON THE FUTURE WITH HOPE

When Jesus—love in human form—faced the cross, He did so “for the joy set before Him” (Heb 12:2). Even in the darkest and most hopeless moment in history, Jesus pointed to a future joy. His eyes were set on salvation and all it meant—a future where we could live sure in love, just as He had.

Jesus displayed perfect faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Heb 11:1).

We are living in the future that Jesus set before Him and purchased for us. Salvation is the promise of resurrection life. The faith we have been invited into is the same faith that Jesus had at the cross when He looked towards the future with hope.

As you are growing sure in God’s love you will begin to see the future as full of promise. You will live with Biblical hope—the confident expectation of His goodness and resurrection-life being established in your own life.

“For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Rom 8:24-25)