This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

– 1 John 3:16

• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God because when I was so incredibly lonely and hurting God gave me the most incredible wife, companion, and friend.
• I love God because when I was trapped in the mountains during an ice storm and succumbing to hypothermia, God woke me up and helped me get out of there.
• I love God because I remember the sense of awe and fear and of God’s protection when I lost control of my beat up car with bald tires in the middle of speeding I-285 traffic. I completed several 360’s at 65mph with cars all around me and never got a scratch. When the car stopped spinning I knew that God’s hands were all around me.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God because God didn’t give me the church that my pride wanted but gave me the church that my heart dreamed could be possible and that my soul needed.
• I love God because God came into my life in a moment of light and radiance and warmth when I was only five years old – just a short time before I would need God’s protection to keep my soul from being irrevocably twisted, broken, and mangled.
• I love God because God has given me a grandmother who has prayed for me every day of my life.
• I love God because God made me something I never thought I should be – a father. And in making me a father God has exposed old wounds long buried and brought them healing.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for all the struggles and hardships I have faced that have brought me closer to God.
• I love God for the gift of Jesus – an expression of who God is that I can begin to understand and a vision of who I might become.
• I love God for all the tears God has helped my cry over things that need to be acknowledged and wept for.
• I love God for using the story of our church to teach me about God’s goodness and faithfulness beyond what my eyes can see.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for hearing my prayers when my children were sick.
• I love God for letting me see and experience the beauty of Christian community through our church.
• I love God because I can still feel the rock ledge brushing the back of my neck from when I went cliff diving and I can still feel the hand of God moving me just enough that I didn’t lose my life or the use of my body that day.
• I love God for calling me to preach, even though most Sundays before I come up I day dream of preferable alternatives to preaching like getting to face down a group of machete wielding thugs coming through the back door instead of having to stand in this place of terror and haunting inadequacy and attempt to offer people I care deeply about a taste of the goodness of God’s Kingdom on a shard of a broken vessel.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for teaching me about God’s grace and love through the people God has called me to serve.
• I love God for letting me hear my children’s laughter and see my wife’s smile.
• I love God for the lives I have seen God change.
• I love God for the stamp of God’s love and presence I have witnessed in the lives of believers from around the world and the sense of hope, well being, and connection that gives me.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for the beauty and goodness of the Gospel and the hope of the life to come.
• I love God for conversations with friends that have filled my soul and shaped my life.
• I love God for taking me back through some of the most painful moments of my childhood and letting me see that God was right there with me.
• I love God because when I was terribly sick and scared, God’s comforting presences came to me in the middle of the night and stayed with me till morning.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for that first morning that I held my tiny son in my arms, saw the sunrise breaking over the city, and felt warm tears of joy coming down my face; completely overwhelmed that life could be so good.
• I love God for being my healer and my friend.
• I love God for the times I have seen the evidence of God’s activity in faraway places.
• I love God for teaching me through homelessness and financial uncertainty about God’s incredible faithfulness.
• I love God for the sense of well-being that comes from having a home to call my own.
• I love God because God first loved me
• I love God for giving me better dreams than the ones I thought I wanted.
• I love God for all the beautiful expressions of love, kindness, selflessness, and compassion I have seen and experienced through God-shaped people.
• I love God for being my safe place and my grand adventure and for refusing to be anything less.
• I love God for all the ways I have seen God use people’s brokenness for beautiful purposes.
• I love God because God first loved me