Lavished: Meeting the God Who Gives More Than Enough

There is a word in Scripture I can’t get away from:

Lavished.

Not rationed.

Not reluctantly handed out.

Not given only after we finally get ourselves together.

Lavished.

Ephesians 1:7–8 tells us that in Jesus we have redemption through His blood and the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of God’s grace—grace that He lavished on us.

And 1 John 3:1 invites us to stop and really look:

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”

The Greek word used in Ephesians is perisseuō. It carries the idea of abounding, overflowing, exceeding a fixed measure—having more than enough and enough to spare.

That changed the way I saw God.

His grace isn’t a trickle.

His love isn’t barely enough.

His goodness isn’t measured out by the teaspoon according to how well you behaved this week.

It is abundant. Overflowing. More than enough.

It is lavished.

I Knew Church Before I Knew His Lavished Love

I grew up in church.

They taught the Bible, and the people there were like family to me. I’m thankful for so much of what I was given. They did their best to serve God, obey Him, live right, and teach others to do the same.

But when I look back now, I realize I saw very little real transformation in many people.

There was faithfulness. There was serving. There was obedience. There were rules and expectations.

But something was missing.

The love of the Father.

Not knowledge about His love. Not saying, “God loves you.”

I mean actually receiving His love—being so filled with the revelation of how deeply, completely, and extravagantly the Father loves you that His love begins pouring out of you toward everyone else.

Because when we haven’t received His love deeply for ourselves, we often try to love others from our own strength.

And human love eventually runs dry.

We can serve people while judging them.

We can tell people the truth without tenderness.

We can hold people accountable without first making sure they know they are loved.

We can know Scripture and still miss the heart of the One who breathed it.

But the love that comes from the Father is different.

“We love because he first loved us.” — 1 John 4:19

We receive first.

Then we overflow.

Then My Life Fell Apart

Can I tell you something?

It wasn’t until my own life fell apart that I began to understand this.

I came to a place of complete surrender. I had nothing impressive to offer God. I wasn’t standing before Him with a list of accomplishments or showing Him what a good Christian I had been.

I was in a pit.

And Jesus reached into it.

What I experienced there changed everything I thought I knew about Him.

He filled me with the gift of His lavished love.

And suddenly, I began to understand the God I had read about for years.

The God who wants to lavish His children with grace.

The God who is rich in mercy.

The God whose kindness leads us to repentance.

The God who gives joy and peace.

The God who doesn’t merely tolerate His children but calls us His own.

In that moment, He didn’t meet me with condemnation.

He didn’t stand over my brokenness rehearsing everything I had done wrong.

He loved me.

And that love changed me.

That doesn’t mean God doesn’t care about sin. Jesus gave His own life to redeem us from it. It means I discovered that His transformation of us flows from His love—not from shame, fear, or our desperate attempts to earn His approval.

His love didn’t make me want to keep running from Him.

His love made me want to run toward Him.

You Cannot Earn What God Has Already Chosen to Give

Please study your Bible and meet this God.

Don’t just study Scripture looking for another rule to keep.

Study it looking for Him.

Look for Jesus.

Look at the Father revealed through Jesus.

Look at the cross.

Look at grace.

Look at mercy.

Look at the God who loved you while you were still a sinner.

You are not saved by works.

You cannot earn His love by serving more, trying harder, attending more, giving more, or becoming impressive enough.

It is a gift.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith… it is the gift of God—not by works.”

— Ephesians 2:8–9

There is a surrender that happens when we finally stop trying to earn what Jesus already purchased.

Holy Spirit, I surrender. Teach me. Lead me into truth. Show me the Father. Let me receive what I could never earn.

And something beautiful begins to happen.

Serving Stops Feeling Like Trying to Prove Something

When you encounter the lavish love of God, serving begins to change.

It is no longer:

I have to.

I’m committed, so I better.

This is what good Christians do.

God will be disappointed if I don’t.

Instead, something inside you says:

I want to.

I want to love people because I have been loved.

I want to forgive because I have been forgiven.

I want to give because God has been overwhelmingly generous with me.

I want to tell people about Jesus because I desperately want them to experience the God I have come to know.

You stop trying to convince people to become religious, and you start longing for them to encounter Jesus.

You want them to know the God who meets people in pits.

The God who restores.

The God who heals hearts.

The God whose grace is more than enough.

The God who lavishes.

Have You Slipped Back Into Religion?

Here is my challenge for you—and for me:

Have you fallen back into religion?

Has following Jesus slowly become mostly about rules again?

Have words like accountability, discipline, obedience, and “iron sharpens iron” become louder in your life than grace, mercy, kindness, patience, and love?

Those things have their proper place. Scripture teaches correction, wisdom, obedience, and accountability. But biblical correction should never be separated from the character of the Father.

God’s correction is not humiliation.

It is the loving discipline of a Father toward His children.

He is gentle. He is kind. He is patient. He is rich in mercy. His grace does not excuse our sin—it transforms us from the inside out.

God doesn’t expose darkness because He wants to shame you.

He brings you into the light because He loves you too much to leave you there.

So come back to Him.

Come back to Jesus.

And surround yourself with believers who continually point you back to Him—not merely to Christian performance, but to the One who loves you lavishly.

Find people who remind you of grace when you stumble, truth when you wander, mercy when you fail, and Jesus when you forget who you are.

And pray:

Father, I surrender.

I don’t want to simply know about Your love. I want to receive it.

Pour Your love into my heart through Your Holy Spirit. Tear down every false picture I have carried of You. Teach me Your heart. Lead me into all truth. Let Your grace transform me, and then let Your love overflow through me to everyone around me.

Maybe you have spent years trying to give God your very best.

But perhaps today He is inviting you to stop striving long enough to receive His.

His grace.

His mercy.

His kindness.

His joy.

His peace.

His Spirit.

His love.

More than enough.

And enough to spare.

Lavished.

Love, 

Tricia