When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only person in the world.

Grace is God's acceptance of us. Faith is our acceptance of God accepting us.

God does not love us because we are so valuable; we are valuable because God loves us."

You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart. Its precious blood is poured everywhere, soothing, healing, saving.

Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God.

Part of the depressive syndrome is that you are immensely loyal to your interpretation of yourself and your world. If God says you are forgiven in Christ, you create new rules that mandate contrition, penance, and self-loathing. If God says he loves you, you insist it is impossible. There it is: your system is higher than God's.

Though the cross and everything leading up to it violate our sensibilities and we are rightly aghast, the reality is that human beings have never liked God very much. At the cross, the nature of God was most fully revealed. As a result, human contempt was also most fully revealed and brought to a laser-like focus and intensity.

Do you believe that it is impossible for the Holy God to love you and even delight in you? If so, you are believing Satan's lie that God loves you because of what you do. The truth is that he loves you because he is the God who loves, and the sacrifice of Jesus proves it. The cross of Christ expresses God's delight in all who believe, and if you believe that Jesus is the risen Lord, he delights in and loves you.

You believe lies about God. Guaranteed. You think he can't see all things; you think he doesn't care; you think that he reluctantly forgives; you think that he is far away; you think that he loves many people but not you. Don't assume that you know him. Read the Gospels.

Jesus suffered, and Jesus was dearly loved as the only Son of the Father. When we suffer what seems like endless pain, it is hard to believe that God loves us, but Jesus' suffering proves that it can be true.

If we look only at God's love, we will not need him, and there will be no urgency in the message of the cross. If we focus narrowly on God's justice, we will want to avoid him, and we will live in terror-fear, always feeling guilty and waiting for punishment.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.