God’s love is unchangeable; He knows exactly what we are and loves us anyway.

In fact, He created us because He wanted other creatures in His image upon whom He could pour out His love and who would love Him in return. He also wanted that love to be voluntary, not forced, so He gave us freedom of choice, the ability to say yes or no in our relationship to Him. God does not want mechanized love, the kind that says we must love God because it’s what our parents demand or our church preaches. Only voluntary love satisfies that heart of God.

God is a God of love, and He is not blind to man’s plight.

From the very beginning of man’s journey, God had a plan for man’s deliverance. In fact, the plan is so fantastic that it ultimately lifts each man who will accept His plan far above even the angels. God’s all-consuming love for mankind was decisively demonstrated at the cross, where His compassion comes from two Latin words meaning “to suffer with.” God was willing to suffer with man.

God’s love did not begin at the cross. It began in eternity before the world was established, before the time clock of civilization began to move. The concept stretches our minds to their utmost limits.

Can you imagine what God was planning when the earth was “without form and void”? There was only a deep silent darkness of outer space that formed a vast gulf before the brilliance of God’s throne. God was designing the mountains and the seas, the flowers and the animals. He was planning the bodies of His children and all their complex parts.

How could creation be by chance?

Even before the first dawn, He knew all that would happen. In His mysterious love He allowed it. The Bible tells us about the “Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). God foresaw what His Son was to suffer. It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.

from “Hope for the Troubled Heart” by Billy Graham