Since
that first encounter with Jesus, I have spent the last forty years getting to
know Him, learning to trust Him. At my
long-time church, we said that the goal of a believer is to become a fully
dependent follower of Jesus Christ. But
I realize that I will never completely depend on Jesus until I am entirely
convinced that He is dependable. I must
be sure His love is real, trustworthy and unchanging. When I doubt God's love for me, I slip back
into my old habits. I think it's safer
to run my life my way. The reformer
Martin Luther must have had the same experience. “The sin underneath all our sins,” Luther
said, “is the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of
Christ and that we must take matters into our hands.”[1] Following my own devices, I have often
come to the top of a cliff and been forced to trust God to show up. He always does. His love never fails. I am continually relearning that I can depend
on His love.
When it
comes to love, actions speak louder than words.
Jesus' actions scream “I love you!
I love you! I love you!” His
love for me is not dependent on my love for Him. He did not wait around for me to develop a
love for Him. He took action long before
I ever thought or cared about Him.
Read the
following passage noting how often you see the word love. You might find it helpful to circle or
highlight the words love, loves or loved every time you
come to them. As you read, think about
these questions:
- How is God described?
- Where
does love come from?
- Where
does real love begin?
- How did
God show us His love?
- When we
realize how much God loves us, how does that change our lives?
Dear
friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone
who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not
know God--for God is love. God showed
how much He loved us by sending His only Son into the world so that we might
have eternal life through Him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God,
but that He loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much,
we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love
each other, God lives in us, and His love has been brought to full expression
through us. And God has given us His
Spirit as proof that we live in Him and He in us. Furthermore, we have seen
with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent His Son to be the Savior
of the world. All who proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in
them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our
trust in Him. God is love, and all who
live in love live in God, and God lives in them. (1 John 4:7-16, NLT)
God is
love. What a simple, powerful statement
of truth. A few years ago there was a
Country-Western song entitled I've Been Looking for Love in All the Wrong
Places. Well, if you start looking
for lasting love apart from God you are looking in the wrong place because love
comes from God. Love is God's
creation. Love is God's core. Love is God's character. Love is God's career. “Mostly what God does is love you.” (Ephesians
5:2a, MSG) We don't have to manufacture
love for God. Our love for God comes
only as a response to His love for us.
God has
done more than just say He loves us; He has proven his love by sending his Son
as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Sin simply means to miss the mark, to fall short of perfect reflections
of his character that God created us to be.
God wants us to love others as He does but we'd rather get even. God cannot lie, but we think cheating on our
income tax is justifiable. God designed
us to worship Him, but we consider ourselves the center of the universe and
spend our lives looking out for number one.
Perhaps you think that because God is love, He will overlook all our
faults, pretend they don't exist. But because
God is just, He cannot ignore sin. He is
the ultimate judge, and He has already passed judgment on sin. The penalty for sin is death. We all deserve to die because we have all
sinned. Bummer!! But Jesus died in our place. His death paid the penalty. His sacrifice takes away our sins, removes
the barrier between God and us and saves us from ultimate punishment. If we ever question God's love, all we have
to do is look at the cross. God loved us
so much that He would rather die than live without us.
Encountering
love such as this is a life-changing experience. Anyone who comes in contact with the God who
is love will begin to love others as God does.
It's inevitable. Real love starts
in the heart of God and overflows to us through the Holy Spirit then out
through our lives to those around us.
Secure in the knowledge that God loves us, we start to love and forgive
those we once resented. Sometimes this
change of heart takes us by surprise.
That was my experience. Remember
Jay, the guy who broke my heart, the one I tried to kill with coldness? Since he had graduated the end of my freshman
year, I thought I would never see him again.
But when I returned to campus in the fall of my sophomore year, I ran
into Jay at welcome back party. Surprised
to see him, I went up to him and started a conversation. We talked like old friends. I didn't think anything of it. The next day, however, he called me up with
one question, “What happened to you?” Evidently, he couldn't reconcile my
friendly demeanor with the revengeful witch I used to be. “Come over; we have to talk,” I told
him. Yes, something had happened to
me. I had met Jesus. I had experienced
His love. The love of Jesus wiped out
all my bitterness and put love in its place.
I'm not sure Jay understood my explanation. He probably thought that I had gone a little bit
insane, that I had become a Jesus freak, a religious fanatic. But Jay couldn't deny that I had
changed. He had felt the love and
forgiveness of God through me.
Learning the Lesson:
Learning the Lesson:
You
must be something special: God thought
you were worth dying for!! Take some
time to dwell on that. Today, try to
find at least one way to convey your gratitude to God for His sacrificial love
for you. Try passing His love on to
someone else who needs it through a smile, a kind remark, a listening ear, a
gentle touch. Is there someone who has
hurt you in the way that your sin hurt God?
Ask God to give you His love for that person and enable you to extend
forgiveness to him.
[1] I like this quote and you can find it all over the
internet attributed to Luther. Unfortunately,
I cannot find where Luther said this.
Since he wrote hundreds of books and pamphlets and everything he said at
dinner was written down in Table Talks,
there is a good chance he really said this.
No comments:
Post a Comment