My shoulders stiffened as the preacher began a sermon on love covering some of the most famous verses in the Bible. I sat among friends. No one knew I cried myself to sleep the night before over a Facebook thread between the boy I liked and another girl. Instead they saw my pursed lips and my I’m-over-it stare as the preacher encouraged us to grow in our understanding of the love of God. Ugh.

After church, a motherly friend asked how I was doing. I vomited my frustration all over her. Then I blurted the question I held behind my pursed lips for the whole service: “So God loves me, so what?”

As a Christian, love should be a close companion, right? But I found it a stranger or a fuzzy feeling, never amounting to anything. And yes, I was over it.

This is what happens when we draw our conclusions about love from the failures of people. While their love flounders, the love of God never fails. It also never remains abstract.

GOD’S LOVE ALWAYS HAS RECEIPTS

Love is more than a puff of pretty smoke. The Bible is full of verses that prove God’s love. Or, in modern terms, God’s love has the receipts. 

God’s receipts say more than the four-letter word I considered too abstract. God values and cares for us through life-giving words. He sticks with us through the good and the bad and humbles himself to help us, even when we’re at our worst. He loves us in generous, too-good-to-be-true ways. No matter what we’re struggling with, God’s love meets us where we are and calls us deeper into relationship with him. No matter where you’re at, there are verses in the Bible that can comfort you when you doubt your value, feel lonely, feel unlovable, or simply feel like the woman who can’t get her act together. 

VERSES FOR THE WOMAN WHO DOUBTS HER VALUE

The same God who spoke the world into existence cares for his beloved children. We have value not because of anything we do, but because God created us and we belong to him.

• But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” –Isaiah 43:1
• I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. –Psalm 139:14a
• Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. –Luke 12:6–7

VERSES FOR THE WOMAN WHO FEELS LONELY

God, the great lover of our souls, is always near to his people. And yet he is not only with us always; he also invites us into deep fellowship with himself. Through praying, meditating on Scripture, and engaging with his people, we can experience the presence of God.

• You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forever more. –Psalm 16:11
• The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. –Psalm 145:18
• Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. –John 15:4

VERSES FOR THE WOMAN WHO FEELS LIKE SHE CAN’T GET HER LIFE TOGETHER

We often think God seethes in heaven when we fail. But God doesn't wait for us to get our act together before he comes to us. He already did the work to secure our welfare. Not many would love us to the point of death. But Jesus already did. He holds everything together so we don’t have to.

• It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit. –Hosea 14:8b
• And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. –Colossians 1:17
• For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. –Mark 10:45

VERSES FOR THE WOMAN WHO FEELS UNLOVABLE

God does not love us because of anything good in us or anything we’ve done to earn his love. As Susanna Wesley, mother of theologians John Wesley and Charles Wesley, said, “He loved us because he loved us.”¹ Jesus is so committed to our good that he was willing to die to secure our salvation. God the Father, who knows how to give good gifts to his children, gave us the greatest gift. No one else can offer such blessing: pardon from the eternal punishment we deserve. Forgiveness of sins. Eternity with God. Unbroken fellowship. We aren’t unlovable; we are already loved to the fullest by God.

• In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. –1 John 4:10
• But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. –Romans 5:8
• For by grace you have saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. –Ephesians 2:8

SNUGGLE UP WITH THIS TRUTH

I traced God’s love through a Bible-in-a-year reading plan and discovered it on nearly every page. And the next time I found my heart shattered by rejection, the Lord met me in Bible verses displaying his love. He reminded me he is the source of my greatest need. He is my perfect, loving Father. His love extends back before creation and stretches forward into my eternal future. His love is in the details. This is truth we can snuggle up with and trust. His receipts are everywhere. Let’s ask him for eyes to see the way he loves us today.