Daily Devotional - John 3:17

Daily Devotional - How easily we slip into thinking we’ve wandered too far, fallen too hard, failed too often. That persistent voice inside—sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar—tells us we’re beyond reach, that surely God must be disappointed. We carry our mistakes like heavy stones, each one adding to the weight of shame, each memory replaying like a film we wish we could erase. The heaviness settles in our chest, making every step forward feel impossible.

Then there is the Word, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.: John 3:17, that breaks through like the dawn. God did not send His Son to condemn us.

The mission of Jesus was not heaven’s judgment, but heaven’s love reaching down. He didn’t come to catalogue our failures, but to lift us from them—to gather us up from the places we’ve fallen and lead us home.

Every moment of His life echoes this truth. His compassion for the broken. His healing touch on the unclean. His gentle words to the outcast. His arms stretched wide on the cross. From His first miracle at a humble wedding—turning water into wine to spare a family embarrassment—to His final breath, offering forgiveness to those who crucified Him, Jesus revealed the heart of God: not condemnation, but salvation; not rejection, but restoration.

I spend a great deal of time beside hospital beds, walking with people in their final hours. Too often, I hear the same quiet fear—disappointment in themselves, or disappointment in God—because they were never properly shepherded into the truth of His grace. Many don’t doubt God’s power; they doubt His willingness to receive them.

Today, let this truth set your heart free: you are not God’s disappointment—you are the reason He came. Christ’s journey to the cross was not reluctant or accidental; it was purposeful love. And even now, He still reaches for the weary, the broken, and the unsure, calling them beloved.