👉🏻 In other words, does your relationship with God feel like a never-ending performance review?
Are you constantly measuring yourself by thinking things like:

And somewhere along the way, you may have started believing that the answer to those questions determines how God feels about you.
(Or maybe that belief is what brought about the questions.)
🎉 Either way, when you're doing well spiritually, you feel a little more secure.
You think, “Okay. I'm doing better. God must be pleased with me.”
😢 But when you mess up?

👟 But here's the problem, friend: There’s no finish line. There's always something else you could be doing better.
And even when you have a really good spiritual day, that relief doesn't last very long.
Because tomorrow you could fail again.
And that's what makes this so exhausting, right?

You're not just tired of trying to be good.
You're tired of wondering whether being good enough will finally make you safe in God's love.

👉🏻 Friend, here is the lie underneath all of this: God's love is something you earn through your behavior.

So without even realizing it, you can start treating God's love almost like a paycheck. If you perform, God rewards you with love.
But that's not actually love. That's a transaction.
And if God's love worked that way, you would never be able to relax. Because you'd always have to keep earning it.
And I think this is where an even deeper belief can take root in your heart.
You can look at another Christian woman and think: Of course God loves her.

🚫 And you come to this conclusion: “They qualify for God's love. I don't.”
But I want you to notice something: that belief assumes that God's love is earned.
It assumes that the women who perform well enough get God's love, while the women who don't perform well enough don't.
But friend–what if that's not how God's love works at all?
What if God's love isn't a reward for good behavior?
🎁 What if, instead, God's love is a gift?

Let's completely change the question.
👉🏻 Instead of asking: “What do I need to do to make God love me?” I want you to ask: “What if God's love for me existed before I ever did anything to deserve it?”
Because Scripture takes us much further back than your performance.
In fact, it takes us all the way back to before creation.
Ephesians 1:4 (NLT) says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”
Friend, think about that for a moment.

God already knew and loved you.
💖 His love came first.
And Romans 5:8 (NLT) makes this even clearer. It says, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

God loved first.
And then there's 1 John 4:19 (NLT) which says, “We love each other because he loved us first.”
I want you to notice the order of those words.

🤯 You don't love God so that He will love you. You can love God because He already loved you.
That truth completely changes your relationship with Him. Because God's love isn't based on your performance; it’s a gift.
If someone gives you a gift (such as a friend or a family member), you don't look at it and say, “Okay, but what do I need to do to keep deserving this?”
A gift is given because the giver wants to give it. (At least, that’s the case in a healthy relationship.)
And that's how Scripture talks about God's grace.

Ephesians 2:8–9 (NLT) says, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
And Titus 3:5 (NLT) says, “He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.”

Friend, do you see how different that is from the lie you've been believing?
The lie says: “Be good enough and God will love you.”
But the biblical message is: God loved you when you had nothing to offer Him.
🪴 His love for you isn't waiting at the finish line of your spiritual growth. His love is what meets you where you are and gives you the security to grow.
So if you've been asking yourself, “How do I make God love me?” … I want you to know: You don't.
You can't.
And you don't have to.
👐🏼 Because God's love isn't something you manufacture through your performance. It's something you simply receive.

I want you to pause and gently ask yourself: “Am I responding to God's love—or am I trying to earn it?”
And then remind yourself: “God's love is a gift, not a reward.”
And that you don't need to:

That being said, if you've been struggling with feeling like you have to earn God's love, suddenly trying to receive it instead might be challenging.
So I want to invite you to my membership community, Relate Escape Place, because you don't have to figure out how to receive God's love all by yourself.