Tell us about a time that you experienced God's amazing love for you.
During the first half of 2010 I had a pretty shitty, lonely time at work (and I also happened to live in the same house as my employers which didn't make the situation any easier). The situation had been going on for months and I came to a point where I was so depressed that it felt like all colour had been sucked from the world and I felt so hopeless and was in so much pain that I would break out into tears at the most random moments.
In my church people believe that God can speak to you by putting phrases into your head and during each Sunday service people come forward to share what they think God has told them for the congregation. In the middle of July 2010 the associate pastor of my church shared that he had gotten the phrase "tears in the darkness" for someone in the congregation and he added "No one knows that you are crying but God knows and God sees and he will lift you up and restore you." That prophecy fit me perfectly but I was in such a state that I thought "Let's just see if anything happens at all."
Within six days the whole situation I had been struggling with for ages was completely and unexpectedly resolved. I lost my job as a result and had to find a new place to live but that was actually a blessing in disguise since I could finally move on, just breathe out and start to heal. I found a new, cheap place to live in a beautiful area without even having to try, a friend just offered it to me and I also soon got a better paid job in a much better working environment. During this whole transition period God's timing was just perfect and he showed me through many little practical and personal details how much he cared, he just treated me with such tenderness. I remember looking back and thinking, "God has saved me, he has genuinely saved me."
Also God speaks to me through art, especially music, and again I wasn't in a very good place emotionally when I watched the movie "Revolutionary Road". The soundtrack of this movie has a transcendent, otherworldly quality to it and I remember sitting in the cinema, feeling very down and God somehow comforting me and saying to me through the music that though we are struggling down here on earth there is another, a higher dimension and things will be fine, things will be okay, God is in control.
I could tell several stories of how God has supplied me with places to live, jobs, emotional support etc over the years. One of my favourite Bible verses is 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 because it shows that we can make it despite our weakness through God's power: "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." I really, really love God.