You can tell the people that know that God loves them: they are the ones who love God. You can tell they love God because they really want to do what he says – they want to be like him in fact. You can tell also because of the Spirit of God in them. Which is to say, you can tell that God has pitched his tent in their life. That they have a house guest who has kind of taken over their life. Filled it with his life.
You can tell it is God’s life because of the way they love. They don’t always do what you might have expected, but that is because they love through God’s eyes. They see things differently. They see what really matters. They are like triage nurses who can see where the real needs are. They sometimes get abused as triage nurses often do.
But God gets abused too. People can get really annoyed when God doesn’t do what they think he should do. Just as well he stuck to his original purpose and kept on loving the humans he made. Just as well he did send his son to deal with their sin.
And how wonderful that his love for the humans is still being put into action through other humans in whom he lives. Who know the story and have the experience of God loving them so much.
Dale