You may be reading this right now, feeling like God’s love is for every one in the world except you. You might feel like God’s forgiveness is for anyone who asks but you.

You’d say, “You don’t know what I’ve done in the past. You don’t know who I really am when I’m alone in the dark with no one else around.”

I don’t. No one else probably knows. But God knows.

Nothing you’ve ever done will shock God. Nothing you’ve ever thought in your deepest secret thoughts will take Him by surprise.

God says to you, “I love you just as you are right now, with all your flaws and scars and sins and fears. I love you as you are but I refuse to leave you that way. My love for you is a consuming fire, burning away all that is not worthy of Me so that what remains is your truest self, who I made you to be.”

Jesus saw you at your worst, in your weakest moment, and chose you. He looked at you in the moment you wish could go way, in the very worst choices you made, and said, “This one is worth dying for. This one is worth all my life’s blood to redeem.”

That’s the gospel. Salvation and grace are for everyone. Even me. Even you.