Fiercely Loved

God's Wild Thoughts about You

Lisa Bevere

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780800741709
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493437450
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A 90-day devotional to change the way you think God thinks about you

When God thinks about you, he isn't looking for a reason to disqualify, disown, or judge you. He's not watching for you to fail. Never! He is our qualifying, adopting, and redeeming failsafe. We are the ones who fixate on our failures. Our Father does not.

In this 90-day devotional, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Bevere wants to shift your perspective from the concept of being someone who is merely tolerated to someone who is fiercely loved. Each day helps you accept as true another facet of your identity and God's truth, including:

● I am fiercely loved.
● God is wild for me, and I adore him for it.
● The Spirit of God is near, speaking light and life over me.
● It is wild how he knows all, yet calls me daughter.
● I was wildly woven in wonder.

There is not a moment whether you are awake or asleep that God is not thinking wild thoughts of fierce love towards you. Everything changes when you know this and it's important that you never doubt it again.

You are fiercely loved, well thought of, and deeply wanted.

ONE
Fiercely Loved

For love is strong as death.

Song of Solomon 8:6

Fiercely Loved. Did the title quicken a spark of hope within you? Or did you immediately disqualify yourself from such an intense promise?

Either way, a deep knowing that you are fiercely loved is vital. Because it changes everything.

You see, there is nothing passive or indifferent when it comes to how your Creator feels about you. We’ve all heard the phrase “Jesus loves you” so many times that it has become white noise. But when was the last time you felt his love wash over you and lift you when you thought you least deserved it? His love is not just words; it is life. A love that is larger, wilder, and more dangerous than anything we’ve ever known or experienced. A love far vaster than the sum of all expressions of human love. God doesn’t have love for you. He is love for you. He is not merely in love with you. You are immersed in his love. And once it touches you . . . you are never the same.

His love consumes and refines even as it comforts and restores.

I understand that by attaching fiercely to loved, I added a measure of danger, making it sound as though this love would threaten to consume the objects of its affection. Understandably, this pairing of fierce and love is a wild and rare one. At a bare minimum, this type of love would leave its mark on us. We glimpse this coupling in this poetic verse:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm,

for love is strong as death,

jealousy is fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

the very flame of the LORD. (Song of Sol. 8:6)

Love as strong as death and jealousy as fierce as the grave are beyond any human’s capacity to maintain. A love of this type of intensity can be ascribed only to the One who first made us, then gave his all to prove his love for us. But don’t imagine that my use of the word us means that this love is fractured and fragmented into lesser individual pieces. His love is all-consuming and indivisible.

I am fiercely loved.

TWO
Always in God’s Thoughts

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

Psalm 139:17–18

Now, let’s talk about those thoughts. “Your thoughts” here refers to our Father’s thoughts. It’s true that God Most High has ideas about you that are so rare and beautiful they are outside our human comprehension. What is he thinking? Thoughts of love. Thoughts of joy. Thoughts of peace. Thoughts of grace. Thoughts of mercy. Thoughts of creation. Thoughts of goodness. Thoughts of care.

Not only are these thoughts precious; they are innumerable. The task of beginning to number God’s thoughts is just as impossible as counting the sands of the seas. His thoughts never leave us; they are as constant as his love. Fiercely loved one, you have always been, you are, and you will always be on his mind.

And yet we rarely imagine that we are seen this way. These thoughts are the very antithesis of how we’ve learned to see ourselves. I was raised to believe that God was distant and disappointed. But in David’s words, we hear something unexpected; we hear wonder. David reveled in the wild truth that God actually treasured him. Alone in the wilderness, David had come to know the Most High as an intimate friend and confidant, someone who loved him and loved being with him.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him? (Ps. 8:3–4)

Beholding the wonder, David pondered why God would notice him. God’s thoughts are always about his largeness rather than our smallness. Our Father has never been disappointed by the thought of you. You are his idea. He created you. He loves you. He gave his Son to redeem you because you are always on his mind.

I believe my Father’s thoughts toward me are wildly wonderful.

THREE
Wild about You

Be here—the king is wild for you. Since he’s your lord, adore him.

Psalm 45:11 Message

I pray this verse challenges the way you think God thinks about you.

Lovely one, don’t be afraid; only believe this sentiment is for you and be present. The God who is truth cannot lie. He is wild about you . . . and that doesn’t make him crazy. But you’d be crazy not to accept his gift of fierce love. As a daughter of your Lord, you are under his rule. His rule is love. One way you can honor his lordship is by choosing to accept how he feels about you. His love for you is not subject to how you feel about yourself. His love is selfless. He is love. His love is independent of how we look, feel, or act. We might as well surrender to this love that is beyond our comprehension.

Did you wonder why I chose the word wild to describe God’s thoughts about you? Let’s examine some of the adjectives that describe the term wild: exciting, thrilling, enthusiastic, wind-swept, untamed, uncontrollable, fierce, outrageous, unmanageable, unconventional, and reckless.

Let’s pause and ponder the application of these descriptors.

The revelation that the God who is love loves you is exciting. If you are bored with the idea that God loves you, it’s because you’ve heard it but never experienced it.

This realization that he constantly thinks of you is thrilling and should awaken a fresh enthusiasm in every aspect of your walk with the Father. The combined imagery of being untamed, uncontrollable, fierce, outrageous, unmanageable, unconventional, and reckless flies in the face of every sedated man-made religion. It reminds me of a quote about Aslan from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”*

The God Most High, Creator of the heavens and earth, is not a manageable deity that we control or manipulate. Nor is God a man that he should lie (see Num. 23:19). He means what he has said about you. His heart is set on you, and nothing you do or say can remove his seal of love from you. In Christ, his love is forever settled. It is now time for you to settle it for yourself.

God is wild for me, and I adore him for it.

  

* C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 168.

FOUR
The God Who Hovers

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1–2

Our God is the Creator. When the earth was held captive and its wonder buried by fathoms of darkness that made it a formless void, God drew near. The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the shadowed globe.

Let’s pause with this idea of hovering. Rachaf is the Hebrew word meaning to hover, and it is best translated as “to linger or to float in a manner that is at once gentle and cherishing.” I can’t help but envision the tenderness of a mother as she pauses over the bed of her beloved child tossing fretfully in the throes of a nightmare. The mother whispers words of comfort to pull her child from darkness’s grasp: “I am here. Wake up; it is only a bad dream.”

Perhaps you find yourself in the grip of shadowed fears that have made your life feel void of purpose. What once was clear now looms before you unclear and formless. I have good news for you. Our Creator didn’t just hover; he spoke.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen. 1:3)

I believe God is speaking light into any and every formless, void space in you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Presentation Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1. Fiercely Loved
• 2. Always in God’s Thoughts
• 3. Wild about You
• 4. The God Who Hovers
• 5. Who You Are
• 6. Chosen
• 7. Belonging
• 8. Daughter
• 9. You Are a Delight to God
• 10. You Are More
• 11. Waterfall of Grace
• 12. Willing Hearts
• 13. Compassion, Again and Again
• 14. Heirs of an Eternal Covenant
• 15. Unrivaled Lord
• 16. Guided by the Spirit
• 17. The Offer of Truth and Life
• 18. What Do You Call Jesus?
• 19. Perfect Love
• 20. The Reality of God
• 21. Holy God, Holy Daughter
• 22. Holy Fear
• 23. Constant for Our Change
• 24. God Above All
• 25. New Creation
• 26. Clothed in Forgiveness
• 27. Seek the Light
• 28. In Christ
• 29. Ascend
• 30. Unfailing Love
• 31. Spirit-Filled Life
• 32. Love without End
• 33. Drawing from Our Well
• 34. Dear Woman
• 35. A Secure Faith
• 36. Truth in Love
• 37. Truth Evident
• 38. Live the Truth
• 39. Listen to the Wind Words
• 40. All We Do
• 41. As We Are Loved
• 42. Love Lifts Others
• 43. Love in Action
• 44. For His Glory
• 45. Secure in God’s Love
• 46. The Better Instructor
• 47. All Unique
• 48. A Shift in Perspective
• 49. Rise Again
• 50. Love without Rival
• 51. Faithful Love, Fearless Love
• 52. The Way of Love
• 53. Multifaceted Love
• 54. Sealed
• 55. When Hate Isn’t Wrong
• 56. Love Your King
• 57. It Starts with Us
• 58. Walk in My Light
• 59. Love Unlocks Imprisoned Hearts
• 60. Love by Faith
• 61. Speak to Love
• 62. Words of Life
• 63. Contentment, Not Competition
• 64. Beckoned to His Presence
• 65. Train My Words
• 66. Don’t Dare Compare
• 67. Hearts of Influence
• 68. Don’t Settle for Same
• 69. Love and Knowledge
• 70. Glorious More
• 71. Exchanging Lies for Truth
• 72. Kind but Not Soft
• 73. True North
• 74. Fiery Love
• 75. First Love
• 76. Loved, Even When You’ve Lost Your Way
• 77. Preparing the Soil
• 78. Resurrected
• 79. All-Knowing
• 80. The Power to Choose
• 81. The Truth Unchanging
• 82. As I Have Loved You
• 83. An Original Life
• 84. Stop Hiding
• 85. A Soul on Fire
• 86. His Diamonds
• 87. Seize Your Moment
• 88. Well Done
• 89. Faithful to the End
• 90. A Prayer for the Fiercely Loved
• About the Author
• Back Cover