"Who shall ever separate us from Christ's love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword?

"Even as it is written, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are regarded and counted as sheep for the slaughter.

"Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us.

"For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening, nor things to come, nor powers,

"Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:35-39).

You may have no conception of how much God wants you to be free. God hurts when you are unhappy. Sometimes you get up and you are in a bad mood all day. Do you know the kind of day I am talking about?

You are kicking the cat, yelling at the kids, hating the neighbors, and you have this old grumpy, grouchy look on your face. "All I ever do is work, work, work, and nobody appreciates it."

I know how you act because I have done that, too. When the kids come home, you think, Why don't you stay at school fourteen hours a day instead of seven?"

Do you know that hurts God? I am not trying to make you feel bad. I am trying to get you to realize that if you can believe God loves you, you are going to begin to respond to that love, then that love will fill you up and start pouring out all over everybody else. You will be free to be a sweetheart, flowing in the fruit of kindness.

If you will grab hold of the fact that God loves you, your healing will come forth, your prosperity will come forth and your needs will be met. Why? You will just start to relax.

The main reason God can't give us most of the things He wants to give us is that we are so busy trying to get them that He can't catch us long enough to put them on us. God wants you to rest in Him and just love Him. He wants you to let Him love you and just receive.

Source: Tell Them I Love Them by Joyce Meyer
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers