The Bible uses so many different words to describe the idea of love. After all, there’s a difference between loving your favorite taco restaurant and loving your spouse. When it comes to God’s love, the Bible uses the Greek word agape, which is the divine, perfect love God has toward us.
This means God’s love for us is consistent, steady, and unchanging—regardless of what our circumstances or emotions might be telling us. This can be a tricky tension to wrestle with, especially if you don’t currently feel loved or seen by God.
But the good news is that we have more than just our feelings to remind us of God’s love. We can reflect on stories in the Bible to build our confidence in God’s faithfulness, kindness, and unfailing love, even when we don’t feel loved.
5 Examples of God’s Love in the Bible
Here are a few of the stories and verses I cling to when I feel forgotten or overlooked by God. Each one reminds me of one of the many characteristics of God’s unconditional love.
1. God’s Love Meets Our Most Basic Needs
Throughout the biblical narrative, we see the intricate and personal ways God meets the needs of His people— in both individual moments and large crowds.
In the Old Testament, God used ravens to provide bread and meat for the prophet Elijah so he would have enough to eat in the morning and in the evening. After receiving this provision, Scripture tells us that Elijah was directed to a new area, where he met a widow who fed him.
When Elijah arrived, there was one really big problem: she didn’t have enough food to share. She was limited to a handful of flour and a little olive oil. Yet Elijah encouraged her to make him a small loaf of bread with what she had, and enough for her and her son, too. And when she did, the Bible says:
… the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry … 1 Kings 17:16 NIV
The New Testament shows us a similar miracle of provision in John 6, where Jesus fed a crowd of over 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish. After blessing the food, Jesus had His disciples pass out the meal to the crowd. And at the end of their great meal, His disciples picked up an excess of 12 baskets of bread.
Sometimes God’s provision is grand and divine, but often His greatest blessings come through His people. When we consider our greatest blessings, we can remember His faithful, steadfast love provides everything we need.
2. God’s Love Forgives
1 Corinthians 13 is a chapter that intricately details all the unique qualities of love. It says that love is patient and kind, rejoices in truth, always protects, and never fails. All of these things, and more, describe God’s love.
So imagine the weight of verse 5:
... it keeps no record of wrongs. 1 Corinthians 13:5 NIV
God isn’t holding a grudge or keeping a list of all the ways we fall short. Instead, His love fills the gaps of our shortcomings.
Daniel experienced this in the Old Testament. He was taken from his family and home to become a slave in Babylon. Babylon was ruled by King Nebuchadnezzar, who worshiped false gods. Daniel determined to remain steady in his faith, trusting that God was at work even when he couldn’t see it.
In chapter 9, Daniel prays and confesses his sins, and the sins of the people around him. Even in the midst of this prayer, Daniel remembers the character of God’s love, praying:
The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him … Daniel 9:9 NIV
When we feel overlooked, we can cry out to God like Daniel did. We can remember God’s love for us through His faithfulness to forgive us.
3. God’s Love Advocates for Everyone
Jesus’ life was marked by the way He cared for everyone. He went out of His way to heal those who were outcasts by His culture’s standards. He valued women and children in a society where that wasn’t the norm.
In one story, Jesus was traveling through Samaria with His disciples. In the heat of the afternoon, He sent His disciples into the city to find food while He stayed at a well. He met a Samaritan woman while He was waiting, and started talking with her.
The woman was shocked because Jews didn’t associate themselves with Samaritans. The gender difference also would have been countercultural. Still, Jesus extended an invitation to have a conversation by asking for water.
During their conversation, the woman admitted she was living with a man who wasn’t her husband, in addition to having five previous husbands. This would have had negative social implications for her, which was probably why she was gathering water alone during the hottest part of the day, when others in town would have been staying cool in their homes.
Nobody is disqualified from the love of God, and He’s actively working to reach everyone.
Despite this, the Samaritan woman experienced a special moment with Jesus where she felt seen and cared for. In response, she shared her experience throughout her town, and many Samaritans believed in Jesus as the Son of God. A woman who would have felt forgotten impacted her entire community because of Jesus’ inclusive love. The same invitation is available to us. Nobody is disqualified from the love of God, and He’s actively working to reach everyone.
4. Love Is God’s Identity
One of the greatest things about God’s love is that it isn’t exclusive to these examples. His love is unconditional, ever-present, steady, and ready to meet you right where you are. If you feel forgotten or overlooked, remember that God is so much bigger than your deepest hurts.
John 3:16 NIV reminds us: “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.”
When you feel forgotten, remember that Jesus knew you before you were born. And He loved you so much that He died on the cross so that you could have eternal life and a direct relationship with your heavenly Father.
Our sense of belonging or being known isn’t limited to our circumstances or feelings. God is so much bigger than that. Everything He does starts and ends with love. He sees you. He knows you. And He loves you so much that He gave His Son in order to have a restored relationship with you.
5. God’s Love Is Unconditional
Sometimes we can feel far from God’s steadfast love when we make choices that hurt ourselves or others. If others have turned their back on you, it can be tempting to think God will, too. Or maybe if you consider the eight billion other people in the world, you feel insignificant and easily overlooked.
The good news is that God hasn’t given up on you. You’re not too far, and you most certainly aren’t forgotten. In the New Testament, Jesus uses the parable of a wandering sheep to illustrate His unconditional love for us.
“... If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.” Matthew 18:12-13 NIV
Just like the shepherd would celebrate being reunited with his lost sheep, God celebrates when He’s reunited with you.
The Apostle Paul writes about this unconditional love this way:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 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 8:35-39 NIV
We can’t be separated from God’s love because He is near to us. No matter what our feelings or circumstances might try to tell us, the truth is that God is with us right now. He’s protecting you. He cares for you. He hasn’t forgotten about you. He’s ready to provide His strength. And He loves you unconditionally.
How to Show Love
When we wrestle with feeling forgotten, it can be tempting to isolate ourselves. But God meets us in our loneliness and calls us to fight this lie by showing love to others. In many of the stories in the Bible, God uses everyday people like us to share and spread His love with people who might otherwise be overlooked.
You can show love by practicing the same actions: meeting the needs of others, offering forgiveness, and advocating for the marginalized.
It’s difficult to feel forgotten when you’re surrounded by God and His people, showing His love to everyone you meet.