Before the earth took shape, before the mountains rose or the oceans found their boundaries, God thought of you. He thought of me. Long before our first breath, we were the focus of divine love, not because of anything we would accomplish, but simply because love is who God is.
This truth has transformed my life, and I pray it will anchor yours as you raise your children and build your family on the timeless principles that founded this great nation.
Our Declaration of Independence proclaims that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This acknowledgment of God as the source of our freedom isn’t mere political philosophy. It’s the bedrock reality of existence itself. God created us for love, and from that love flows genuine freedom, purpose, and the ability to build families and communities that reflect his kingdom on earth.
For years, I missed this. I knew facts and figures. I understood success and achievement. But I didn’t know God. I had constructed a life on my own terms, believing that freedom meant the absence of restraint, the ability to do and say whatever I wanted without accountability to anyone.
That kind of freedom is really just selfishness dressed in noble language. And it left me empty, anxious, and trapped in cycles I couldn’t break on my own.
The Bible tells us plainly: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). For the longest time, I couldn’t say I loved God because I didn’t truly understand how completely, how sacrificially, how relentlessly he loved me.
God’s love isn’t a response to our goodness. It isn’t earned through moral achievement or religious performance. Ephesians 1:4 reveals the stunning truth: “Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of His love.”
Think about that. The Creator of galaxies, the Author of time itself, designed the entire universe with the specific purpose of creating a space where He could love you. Where He could love me. Where He could love our children and their children after them.
When this reality finally penetrated my heart, everything changed. Not all at once. God’s transformation is often gradual, like dawn breaking over the horizon, but thoroughly and completely.
The Gift of True Freedom
Jesus declared, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). This is the freedom our founders understood, even if imperfectly. Freedom is grounded not in the absence of authority, but in submission to the right authority. Freedom that flows from knowing whose we are.
Christ came to proclaim and deliver freedom from the sin that keeps us trapped. The anger that corrodes our marriages. The envy that poisons our contentment. The greed that makes us poor stewards. The sexual immorality that fractures families. The unforgiveness that builds walls between us and those we love. The selfishness that makes community impossible.
Through Jesus, I found freedom from fear, guilt, worry, bitterness, and the ultimate enemy, death itself. I was set free to stop pretending, free to be the person God designed me to be, free to build a life and family on the solid rock of His love.
How does this freedom come? “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). When you realize how deeply God loves you, you begin to rest in that love. You stop performing. You stop hiding. You start seeing life from His perspective and living the way He intended.
This freedom isn’t something we demand or earn. It’s a gift. And receiving it is itself an act of worship.
Jesus told his followers to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). It’s an unusual command, isn’t it? But it captures perfectly the tension we face as Christians in America today.
Being Christ’s disciple demands a distinctive lifestyle, one that often places us squarely in opposition to the world around us. When we live up to our profession, when we fight against the destructive forces in our culture, when we preach peace in a nation hungry for division, when we apply the golden rule to our commerce and relationships, we will face resistance.
The disciple who is truly a disciple must share the fate of the Master.
But here’s what I’ve learned: when we live with both shrewdness and innocence, with conviction and compassion, with boldness and humility, we command respect even from those who disagree with us. Our consistency, our integrity, our commitment to truth spoken in love, these things draw people to Christ even when our message challenges them.
This is how we fulfill God’s love on earth. This is how we honor the vision of a nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. Not through compromise or silence, but through lives so transformed by divine love that others hunger for what we have.
No Wall Between Faith and Daily Life
There should not be a wall between God’s love for you and your love for God in the workplace. Your colleagues should know where you stand. You should not be ashamed that they know it. In other words, you should not be ashamed of God.
Yes, your personal relationship with him is private. The intimate moments of prayer, the struggles you bring to his throne, the ways he speaks to your heart. But your faith needs to be public. Not obnoxious. Not self-righteous. But visible, authentic, and unashamed.
I’ve learned that living out my faith openly at work doesn’t mean preaching at every opportunity or making people uncomfortable. It means letting my character speak. It means making decisions guided by biblical principles. It means treating people with the dignity they deserve as image-bearers of God. It means speaking truth with grace when the moment calls for it.
When you compartmentalize your faith, keeping it locked away in church on Sunday, you rob both yourself and those around you of the witness God intends. Your coworkers, your neighbors, your fellow parents at school events, they need to see what authentic faith looks like in real life, with real pressures, making real decisions.
As a disciple of Christ, he gives us three imperative commands: repent of our sins, believe the Gospel, and follow him. These aren’t suggestions or nice ideas to consider. They’re the pathway to life itself. And they’re meant to be lived out not just in the safety of our homes and churches, but in every sphere of influence God has given us.
Repentance means turning from the ways that lead to death and embracing the way that leads to life. Believing the Gospel means trusting that Jesus is who he said he is and did what he said he did. Following him means allowing his lordship to shape every decision, every priority, every relationship, including those at work.
Most people spend their entire lives missing their purpose. They accumulate knowledge such as stock quotes, sports scores, political opinions, and the latest technology, but they don’t know God. They miss out on discovering the depth of His love and all the blessings He has in store.
But that doesn’t have to be true for you.
God’s priority for your life is clear. Yes, it’s important to serve Him. Yes, obey and trust Him. But your first purpose, the foundation on which everything else is built, is to love Him.
To love God back is your number one calling. Unlike ants and snails, you were made in His image. You have the capacity to know and love the One who formed you, who died for you, who invites you into eternal relationship with Him.
When you grasp this profound truth and let it sink into your soul, you will find great strength, confidence, and peace. You’ll discover the courage to raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. You’ll find wisdom to build a marriage that reflects Christ and His bride. You’ll gain perspective to engage the culture with both grace and truth.
Here is the heart of it all: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).
Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. He came to reconcile us to the Father, to bridge the gap our sin created, to pay the price we could never pay.
And he did it while we were still sinners. Before we cleaned up our act. Before we had anything to offer. Christ died for us, the ultimate demonstration of love (Romans 5:8).
This is the Gospel that saved my soul. This is the good news I proclaim without shame: that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took my place on the cross, died for my sin, defeated death, and rose victorious on the third day so that I might live with him for eternity.
All he asks is that we believe, that we receive his gift, that we love him back.
An Invitation
If you’ve been searching for purpose, freedom, and peace, the kind that doesn’t depend on circumstances or achievements, I invite you to consider Jesus today. Not religion. Not rules. A relationship with the God who created you to love you.
First John 4:16 says, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.” Freedom starts when you choose to trust that God loves you and let that love fill every part of your life.
As you raise your family, as you work to preserve the principles of liberty and justice that our founders cherished, as you seek to honor God in your home and community, remember this: you were created to be loved by God, and to love him back.
That is your purpose. That is your calling. That is the foundation on which everything else is built.
And it’s the most beautiful, freeing, life-giving truth you’ll ever discover.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
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