The most consistent prayer I offer when people come out for a few hours or a day or overnight at Corhaven is, “God, please help them to encounter your love, your deep deep love for them”, and we try to facilitate that in any way we can.

One of the reasons why this purpose of Corhaven is so clear is because of something that that I’ve noticed in many conversations and encounter pretty regularly, enough to see this pattern in others in part because I’m so familiar with it in myself.    The deep conversation is with Christians, specifically mature Christians who are struggling to know that God loves them.  This struggle to know God loves them manifests itself in a variety of certain behaviors and feelings (like anxiety, overstress, fear), or the articulated and specific sharp question itself, or in the midst of deep crisis, a dark confusion or very unsettling disorientation.

So many of us who deep down doubt our beloved-ness are those who have been for years able to say without lying out of our very own mouths, “God loves me”, or “God loves you”.   We say it, but do we know it?    This is “I believe God loves everybody, but I’m just not sure how much he loves me” because past sins, current besetting sins, unresolved pain,  deep disappointment or heavy loss, a hard season, or a fear of disappointing God, or fear of missing his will, or trying to tightly control my life in such a way that it surely will turn our right.  I’ve certainly heard folks say, “I don’t want to get too close to God because he might to do something bad like send me as a missionary or take something precious away from me to test me”.  Some folks who can say God loves me underneath are still trying to be “good enough” to invoke his blessing, and for others feelings of assurance of being loved by God is actually quite connected to the regularity of their daily quiet time, it’s legalism in much more subtle disguise.

And yet, nothing is as revolutionary and liberating as going deeper into God’s love for us and really coming to know it in the marrow of our bones.

So we’re offering again one of our most important retreats, “God Loves You…No, Really” on Saturday July 11 from 9.30am-5pm at Corhaven.   I’ll lead it, and we’ll explore the things that cause us to doubt God’s love for us, and explore how we can enable the knowledge of God’s love specifically for each one of us to sink in even further into our hearts.  If you struggle with pretty much anything, this is a critically important retreat for your freedom.