The Love That Waited

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan

There is a verse I have been sitting with lately.
Not reading quickly.
Not passing over it as one more familiar passage of Scripture.
Actually sitting with it.
“But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me…”
That phrase has stopped me.
I have been sitting with this verse for a week now.
Was pleased to reveal His Son to me.
I don't know why those particular words have landed so heavily in my heart.
Perhaps because I have spent so much of my life wrestling with what it means to be loved.
Not knowing whether I am loved.
Knowing it intellectually.
Knowing the verses.
Knowing the theology.
Knowing what Christianity teaches about grace.
But actually feeling loved by God is sometimes an entirely different battle.
There are things the mind can understand long before the heart learns how to rest inside them.
I know that God loves me.
I have known that for years.
I have preached about it.
Written about it.
Prayed about it.
I have encouraged other people with it.
But sometimes there is still a distance between knowing something is true and allowing that truth to reach the deepest places within you.
And lately, this sentence from Paul has been reaching somewhere deep.
He was pleased to reveal His Son to me.
Not irritated.
Not disappointed.
Not reluctantly.
Not because He had somehow made a mistake and now had to fix the consequences.
Pleased.
That word changes something.
Because if I am honest, there have been moments when I have subconsciously imagined my relationship with God almost as though I were an inconvenience He graciously decided to tolerate.
As though heaven looked at my life and sighed.
Well... here we go again.
Another failure.
Another weakness.
Another prayer asking for forgiveness.
Another struggle.
Another mistake.
Another chapter I wish I could erase.
Another reminder that I am still unfinished.
Sometimes I have imagined God looking at me and thinking,
I suppose I better save Dylan.
As though my salvation was some cosmic administrative task that had somehow landed on His desk.
As though Jesus went to the cross reluctantly because I had become a problem that needed resolving.
And yet Paul says something entirely different.
He was pleased.
That is the part I cannot stop thinking about.
God was not caught off guard by Paul.
And He was not caught off guard by me.
Before Paul had preached a sermon, God knew him.
Before Paul had planted a church, God knew him.
Before Paul had written a single word of Scripture, God knew him.
Before Paul had become the apostle we remember, God had already set him apart.
Paul says:
“Before I was born.”
Before Paul had achieved anything.
Before he had demonstrated faithfulness.
Before he had become useful.
Before he had done anything that could possibly make him worthy of God's attention.
If we study the Bible and church history, we discover that Paul was once a persecutor of the early believers of the Christian faith.
There was grace.
And perhaps that is where this becomes deeply personal for me.
Because I think many of us spend our lives trying to become worthy of something that was never offered on the basis of worthiness.
We spend years trying to become enough.
Enough for our parents.
Enough for our partners.
Enough for our friends.
Enough for our careers.
Enough for ourselves.
And sometimes, without realising it, we bring that same system into our relationship with God.
We think we have to become enough before we can truly believe we are loved.
Pray enough.
Serve enough.
Read enough and memorise Scripture.
Give enough.
Obey enough.
Become disciplined enough.
Stop struggling.
Stop failing.
Stop questioning.
Stop carrying the things we carry.
Clean ourselves up.
Then perhaps God will look at us with genuine pleasure.
But Paul destroys that idea.
Because his story begins somewhere else.
Grace.
“Who called me by his grace.”
Not by Paul's achievements.
Not by Paul's righteousness.
Not by Paul's résumé.
Grace.
That word is almost too familiar to us.
We use it so often that sometimes I wonder if we have forgotten how outrageous it actually is.
Grace means the beginning of my relationship with God was never dependent upon me becoming impressive enough to deserve it.
It began with Him.
Before I understood Him.
Before I could articulate theology.
Before I could explain salvation.
Before I could comprehend what the cross meant.
He moved toward me.
That is what grace does.
It moves first.
And Paul's life makes that even more astonishing.
Because Paul wasn't sitting somewhere waiting patiently for Jesus.
He was persecuting Christians.
He was actively moving in the opposite direction.
He wasn't searching for Christ.
Christ came looking for him.
That matters.
Because sometimes we imagine salvation as though we finally became clever enough to find God.
But the Gospel tells a different story.
We were lost.
And He came looking.
We were blind.
And He revealed Himself.
We were running.
And He called.
We were incapable of saving ourselves.
And grace did what we could never do.
Perhaps that is why Paul's testimony has always been so powerful.
He cannot explain his salvation through himself.
His own life makes that impossible.
The man who once persecuted the church becomes one of its greatest proclaimers.
The man who once opposed Christ becomes the man who spends his life preaching Christ.
Something happened.
And Paul understood that whatever happened, it wasn't because he had suddenly become worthy.
It was grace.
God was pleased to reveal His Son.
I keep returning to that.
Pleased.
There is affection in that word.
Intention.
Purpose.
Delight.
Not reluctant obligation.
And perhaps one of the deepest things I have needed to understand about God is that His love for me did not begin when I became useful to Him.
I think that is a trap we fall into.
Especially those of us who serve.
We can begin believing that our value comes from what we do for God.
We preach.
We write.
We serve.
We evangelise.
We create.
We give.
We encourage.
We build.
We become useful.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, our identity can shift from being loved to being useful.
But God never needed Paul because Paul was impressive.
God called Paul by grace.
There is a difference.
The Gospel is not:
Become valuable and then God will use you.
It is:
You are loved by God, and from that love He may choose to use your life.
That changes everything.
Because if usefulness becomes the foundation of identity, what happens when you cannot produce?
What happens when you become tired?
What happens when the book doesn't sell?
When the ministry opportunity disappears?
When the audience becomes quiet?
When the prayers seem unanswered?
When you fail?
When you are sitting alone with nothing to show for yourself?
If your identity is built upon usefulness, those moments become terrifying.
But if your identity begins with being loved, the ground beneath you remains.
You can fail without becoming worthless.
You can rest without becoming irrelevant.
You can struggle without becoming rejected.
You can be unfinished without becoming abandoned.
That is grace.
And perhaps that is why this passage is reaching me so deeply.
Because Paul doesn't say that God tolerated him.
He says God called him by grace.
And then God was pleased to reveal His Son to him.
There is something incredibly intimate about that.
God did not simply reveal a system.
He revealed a Person.
His Son.
Christianity ultimately isn't about discovering a philosophy that helps us live better.
It is about encountering Jesus.
Paul didn't receive merely a set of instructions.
He encountered Christ.
And everything changed.
That makes me think about my own life.
There have been moments when Christianity has felt like information.
Doctrine.
Theology.
Bible study.
Ideas.
Arguments.
Explanations.
But there have also been moments when faith has become something far more personal.
Jesus.
Not merely the answer to a theological question.
Jesus.
The One who meets me in the hospital room.
The One who remains when people leave.
The One who is present when I don't understand.
The One who knows the entire story.
The One who sees every chapter.
The One who knows the things I struggle to say out loud.
And still calls.
Still waits.
Still reveals Himself.
Still loves.
Perhaps that is why the language of relationship matters so much.
God didn't reveal a doctrine to Paul.
He revealed His Son.
There is a face behind the grace.
There is a Person behind the promise.
There is a heart behind the Gospel.
Jesus.
And when I think about that, something else begins to change.
If God was pleased to reveal His Son to Paul, then Paul's past did not make the revelation impossible.
In fact, Paul's past becomes part of the testimony.
That doesn't mean his sin was good.
It doesn't mean persecution was somehow necessary or acceptable.
It means God was able to redeem what Paul could never have redeemed himself.
The man who once destroyed became someone who built.
The man who once persecuted became someone who proclaimed.
The past remained part of Paul's story.
But it no longer determined the purpose of his life.
That connects deeply with everything I have been thinking about recently.
Our memories.
Our wounds.
Our mistakes.
Our failures.
The things that haunt us that we never speak about.
The seasons we wish had never happened.
The people we hurt.
The things we regret.
The years we cannot get back.
Sometimes we think those things disqualify us from being loved.
But Paul reminds us that God is capable of entering the middle of a complicated story and revealing Christ there.
Not after every chapter has been cleaned up.
There.
In the middle of it.
That may be one of the most beautiful things about grace.
Grace doesn't require a clean history.
It creates a new future.
I think about the younger versions of myself.
The little boy.
The teenager.
The young man in hospital.
The man who made terrible decisions.
The man who battled addiction.
The man who wrestled with shame.
The man that for countless years chased peace in suicidal ideations.
The man who sometimes wondered whether there was anything good left to build from the pieces.
If I could go back and speak to those versions of myself, I don't think I would tell them that everything would become easy.
I wouldn't tell them there would be no more pain.
I wouldn't tell them every prayer would be answered the way they wanted.
I would tell them something much simpler.
God knows you.
And He has not abandoned you.
You are not an accident.
You are not an inconvenience.
You are not an afterthought.
You are not something God reluctantly decided to deal with.
You are known.
And grace has already moved toward you.
That is what Paul gives me.
Not a perfect life.
Not an uncomplicated testimony.
But evidence that God's purposes are not limited by the messiness of the person He calls.
Paul was not chosen because his past was clean.
He was called by grace.
And perhaps that is the distinction I have needed to understand.
God's love is not a reward for becoming the person He wanted me to be.
His love is the foundation from which He begins making me into that person.
That is completely different.
One produces fear.
The other produces transformation.
If I believe God only loves the finished version of me, I will spend my life hiding the unfinished version.
But if I believe He loves me while I am still becoming, I can finally bring Him the truth.
The anger.
The insecurity.
The fear.
The doubts.
The wounds.
The failures.
The questions.
The things I still don't understand.
I don't have to pretend.
And perhaps that is why grace feels so much like freedom.
Because I don't have to negotiate my way into God's affection.
I don't have to persuade Him.
I don't have to impress Him.
I don't have to remind Him why I am worth saving.
He already knows.
He knew before I was born.
He knew before I failed.
He knew before I succeeded.
He knew before I understood anything about Him.
And still...
He was pleased to reveal His Son.
There is something about that sentence that feels almost unbearably tender when you stop long enough to actually hear it.
God was pleased.
Not merely willing.
Not merely obligated.
Pleased.
And maybe that is what I have been missing.
Perhaps I have spent too much time asking whether God can tolerate me when the Gospel is inviting me to discover that He delights in bringing me home.
Perhaps I have confused God's holiness with His reluctance.
Perhaps I have confused conviction with rejection.
Perhaps I have mistaken His desire to transform me for His disappointment with me.
Those are not the same things.
A loving Father can correct His child without withdrawing His love.
A surgeon can cut without intending harm.
A gardener can prune without despising the tree.
God's work in us may sometimes hurt.
But His correction is not evidence that His love has disappeared.
Sometimes it is evidence that His love is taking us seriously.
And that gives me hope.
Because I know there is still work to be done in me.
I know there are places in my heart that need transforming.
I know there are attitudes that need surrendering.
I know there are wounds that still influence me.
I know there are moments when I choose fear instead of faith.
I know there are days when I struggle to feel loved even while knowing I am loved.
But perhaps the answer isn't to pretend those things aren't there.
Perhaps the answer is to bring them into the presence of the One who already knows.
The One who was pleased to reveal His Son.
The One who called by grace.
The One who knew the whole story before the first page was written.
And perhaps that is where I find myself today.
Not claiming that I have finally figured out the love of God.
I haven't.
The older I become, the more mysterious it seems.
But I am beginning to believe something I once struggled to believe.
God did not look at my life and sigh.
Jesus did not reluctantly decide that I was one more person He had better rescue.
The cross was not an accident.
Grace was not an afterthought.
My salvation was not a cosmic inconvenience.
Before I had ever taken my first breath, God knew the story.
He knew the beauty.
He knew the brokenness.
He knew the victories.
He knew the failures.
He knew the questions.
He knew the wounds.
He knew the man I would become.
And still, in the words of Paul, He called by grace.
And He was pleased to reveal His Son.
Maybe that is the truth I need to carry into this next chapter.
Not that I am perfect.
Not that I have overcome everything.
Not that I understand every purpose.
But that I am known.
Fully known.
And somehow, unbelievably, still loved.
Not because I finally became enough.
But because He was enough.
Not because I found my way to Him.
But because He came looking for me.
Not because I earned grace.
But because He called me by it.
And perhaps the deepest mystery of all is this:
The God who knew everything about me before I ever knew anything about Him was not disappointed to discover who I would become.
He was already there.
Waiting.
Calling.
Revealing His Son.
And loving me before I ever knew how desperately I needed to be loved.

About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 6.1 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.

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