God's License Plate Love Letter
After the Lord miraculously healed me—a story my wife, Heidi, and I tell in our book entitled Healed!—I was able to go back to work. It was by going back to work that God reinforced two important principles in my life. One had to do with the word He spoke to Heidi about staying healthy. I had lost, over my working history, about five and a half years of working income. Three of those years were due to my disability. Retirement age was on the horizon and I felt that I hadn’t done a good job of investing for the future. I was determined to make up for that now. Not only did I work at the software company during the day, I also worked for another computer company during my off hours. Sometimes I would work 80 to 90 hours a week total. Not that working that many hours is wrong, but my reliance on myself to assure our financial future was. Too many people, once they are healed, go right back into things that got them there in the first place. In my case, the Lord had always taken care of us financially. Why was I thinking He wouldn’t do that for us in the future? When the Lord showed me that I was working those extra hours out of fear and not obedience, I had to repent. “Lord,” I prayed, “I trust You. You love me and You have always provided. I will not work ever again out of fear, but will always remember that You hold my future in Your hands.” Now I work for one company and work a normal number of hours per week doing a job that I enjoy. I no longer fear for the future because I know the One who is faithful.
The second principle that God reinforced was how much He loves every one of us. One day, about a year after returning to work, I was feeling a little down and just needed some comfort from the Lord. I asked God, very innocently but very sincerely, to let me know that He loved me in some tangible way. The Lord often talks to me in signs. But this day I wasn’t really thinking along those lines. I just wanted the Lord to let me know He loved me in an undeniable way. Of course we have the Scriptures that let us know that, but I wanted something a little more personal.
That very afternoon, not more than four hours after that prayer, while I was leaving a store parking lot, an SUV happened to catch my eye. It had been parked about five cars down from my van. There was something strange about the license plate. You see, in North Carolina, most plates are three letters, a dash, and then four numbers. This plate was eight letters with no spaces. As I looked, tears came to my eyes and a tremendous warm feeling of God’s love flowed like warm honey over my entire being. Even as I’m writing this, that feeling is overwhelming me again. The plate had the embossed letters, “ILUVUJOE” emblazoned on it. I just had to stop my van, pull out my cell phone and take a picture. I thought, “Just think how much God has to love me to take the only car in North Carolina with that plate, put it in this parking lot, on this day, at this time, and get me here so I can see that God, the ruler of the universe, loves me. Not only does He love the world, He loves me!”At that moment I heard the Holy Spirit speak to my heart and say that this event wasn’t only to let me know that He loves me individually and personally as His child, but He wanted me to tell this story to those I come in contact with and let them know that He loves them the same way.
Since that time I have told this story to many people and have seen the effect it has had on their lives. Most people can’t believe it until I pull out my cell phone and show them the picture, but the response is almost always the same—their eyes begin to water as they start to understand the love the Father has for them. Not just “God so loves the world” in general, but the Father loves them and knows them by name.
Some people have asked me if I’m someone special that God would do this for me. I tell them that I’m just as special as any other child of God, but I did one thing that most of His children don’t do. I asked. I believe if someone will dare to ask, the Father will answer them also. Maybe not in a license plate, but in a way that is very unique and special to them.
I shared this story just recently with Tabitha, a young woman we know from church. You could just see the countenance on her face change when she read the words on the license plate, “ILUVUJOE.” I told her that if she would ask the Father, He would show His love to her in her own special way. She asked, and the Lord answered. This girl had grown up in difficult circumstances and had a very strained relationship with her own father. One night, the same week, she had a dream. She was having a picture taken with her father. Just before the flash of the camera her father leaned over and wrapped his arms around her in a warm parental embrace. She was surprised and overwhelmed by the love she felt at that moment. She couldn’t resist that love even if she wanted to.
When she woke up the Lord revealed that her earthly father in the dream was symbolic of her heavenly Father, and it was really Him embracing her and showing her how much He loves her! It was her “ILUVUTABITHA” moment and the Lord expressed it in the way it would make the most impact on her. When Tabitha told us the story, you could see the glow on her face because she knew how much her heavenly Father loves her!
Through my “ILUVUJOE” encounter with God, I believe I have learned something else about His love for us. God is an infinite God. Now I was taught that infinity divided by anything is always still infinity. Therefore, infinity divided by the number of humans born since the time of creation (over 100 billion) is still infinity. So the Father, who is infinite love, loves you infinitely. Because He loves you infinitely, you truly can say He loves you best. You are His favorite. You can truthfully say that you are His favorite without taking anything away from anyone else. All of His infinite nature is at your disposal. He has infinite time, resources, mercy, grace, and patience because of His infinite love for you. We all are His favorites and He is the only One who can do that because He is infinitely powerful, infinitely just, and infinitely good.
The Lord showed this to me in a practical way when Heidi and I went to the beach with our granddaughters. We had built a large sand castle with a moat. The girls were going down to the shore with buckets, scooping up the water and running back to fill up the moat over and over again. Did I tell them to stop doing that because the ocean would run out of water and there wouldn’t be anything left for me? Of course I didn’t. We could line every person on the earth up on the seashore and they could scoop buckets of water out of the ocean as fast as they possibly could and the ocean level wouldn’t even perceptively drop at all. That is the love of the Father. There is more than enough for anyone and everyone. And there is certainly more than enough for you.
There is an old song that they used to sing in the church I grew up in:“It is no secret,what God can do.What He’s done for others,He’ll do for you.”
I challenge you to ask the Father today to show you how much He loves you. Ask Him to show this to you in a way that will impact you enough that you won’t forget it even in the hardest times of your life. He is faithful, able, and willing to show His children how much He loves.