God loves you. That is difficult to fathom. With all of the problems and trials that we daily face, we sometimes wonder if there really is a God who cares about us. Let there be no doubt. There is.

When we focus on the difficulties that we have, we may lose sight of the bigger picture in which God has shown how deep His love goes. When we see that big picture, however, His love becomes overwhelming, and our problems can be reconsidered through a very different perspective.

How do we know that God loves us so much? The answer is always this: look at the cross. One of the difficulties posed with the “problem of evil” is that it is a very personal matter. In other words, real people suffer and die. “Why did God let my grandfather suffer?” “Why did God allow these problems to happen to me?” So it is more than a philosophical quest. Real people are asking real questions about God’s role in their own lives.

In the cross, God Himself took on suffering. Jesus suffered; His was no easy task. He made suffering a personal matter, and in doing so, showed beyond any doubt how much He loves His own creation. Now there is nothing that can tell us that God does not love us. There is no amount of trouble, suffering, or even death that can disprove God’s love.

This was Paul’s argument in Romans 8. With the persecution and trials that they faced in the first century, they needed to be convinced of God’s love for them. Here is what Paul told them:

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (vv. 31-39)

If a Christian undergoing intense persecution in the first century had no reason to doubt God’s love, then how can we doubt it today? The Bible does not tell us that we will never have difficulties. In fact, it tells us of them and then helps us to prepare ourselves to deal with them. We must remember that we are living in a world that has been scarred by sin. Problems here will continue. But we can be ready to go to that one place where sorrow and sin will be no more.