Love! What a concept!
It’s a word that stretches across barriers, long distances, drives away our darkest moments and ultimately saves us from destroying ourselves. Gods love utterly breaks through our human conceptions of what love truly means and is and runs out to lengths that sound incredible to our human ears because no man could do it! There is no comparison of Gods Love!
While there is no way during todays message I can expand across huge gulfs to explain all there is about Gods Love, I do want to shed light on a aspect of it during this season of Lent, Power and Passion of Gods Love.
So where can we find Gods Love in todays culture! Well as Christians we should always look to the cross that not only demonstrates Love, but Power and Passion of his incomprehensible Love. But if I was to ask for a more down level description, maybe we could say how other people show love from helping their neighbors, praying for one another, being kind and obedient and so on….
Love can be distributed from so many platforms and so many methods, but only ONE, can actually give Love that is so undeserving that it forces a ‘rethink’ on just how worthy someone truly is to receive it….
Its my belief, we each are our own worse critic. When something is wrong or something we did wrong, we are actually harder on ourselves than just about anyone else. Can you relate?
A known athlete was interviewed once, and gave a truly testimonial display about self punishment.
The athlete was so critical on their self that not only did expectations exceed what was required from the coach, but after a period of time, their actual performance was hindered so much by the time it was needed to perform at an event that it nearly costed them their life. Whats funny about the whole thing, no one on the team even the coach knew they was at risk. The athlete became so absorbed with what ‘they’ thought was deserved after a mistake, wrong doing or a missed step at their practicing, that it was justification for failure throughout the whole time left on earth. Basically nothing worth living unless you do it right the first time!
Now you and I may not be that extreme with our selves, but this does bring to light a serious question.
What does it take to convince each person that God loves you? Not just Love, but with Power and Passion?
Let me go back to the Old Testament in book of Numbers, and describe you an event that I honestly can say was rather confusing to me in my early Christian years.
Numbers 21
So Israel was complaining to Moses they was hungry and thirsty with nothing to fulfill. So God sent poisonous serpents and they was bitten by them, and some did die from it. So they went to moses to ask God to take the serpents away from them. And upon Gods command, a Bronze serpent was made and erected before them on a pole and they was instructed to look upon the bronze serpent and they would live.
So here, we see a demonstration of Gods love that hearing the voices of hurt from his people, in agony and even dying, ultimately it convinced peoples heart that God is Love if they just ‘Look upon the serpent!’
Yes, there is faith involved here as well. Gods love here also was fulfilling his promises to save them.
Gospel of John tells us “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so much the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
It does NOT say your problems will immediately be solved with a painfree solution! There is a price to be paid!
This is a stern realization how Gods passion and power prove a point, that from my original question “What does it take to convince people that God loves them?”
“When we are weak, he is strong!”
When we are down and out, he is there to save us, time and time again.
SO Donald, where are you going with this you ask yourselves!
Think just how God demonstrates something, from parables to actual events. It always expresses his Love, Power and Passion.
Knowing in coming Sundays we will be celebrating Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday, how satisfying is it knowing what Christ did for each of us, required nothing more than believing in him? Just as the bronze serpent from Numbers showed us, the long-long journey Jesus took to the cross while bearing our infirmities demonstrates and shows Gods love.
I remember having conversations with individuals that wanted to deliberate or prove to me how God of the bible is cold, ruthless and implacable! When you do ‘selective’ reading, you do NOT gain perspective of Gods true nature. When you read scripture in full and not in PORTIONS, when you study while asking for guidance from the Holy Spirit, you gain this knowledge.
Nailing a man to a cross to save the world isn’t something that comes natural to our minds! But not just any man would do! It had to be a blemish and sin free sacrifice. Nothing else could substitute.
I am reminded that some religions of the world that claim no one will seek to convert you to a better way of thinking for that will make you stumble over your own feet. Another religion stated a mans belief is central, radical, fundamental, and sets down as the first step in his famous eightfold path to holiness, right beliefs and once that is gained, everything else will follow.
But without mans own works in these two examples, there is NOT HOPE! NONE! Its all what MAN does!
Gods eager grace stretched to the uttermost, cannot save a single soul or a world ‘unless’ it believes in the Son whom he has sent. If we believe in Christ, all for which he stands, if we are prepared to stake our all, our life, our soul, our destiny, on the truth of what he says and do it; if we act on the assumption that this will bear our weight, and venture out on it, much follows of itself.
Think about this question!
What MORE could God do to express and show is Love for us? What more could God do than to give his ONLY SON to take our sins away! God tried every way to help save us, but it had to be completed or finished by the ultimate sacrifice.
In the Old Testament we are shown time and time again how God performed miracle after miracle and still lacked the faith to believe. Its NOT what was experienced that saved them, its when the sting and pain of sin that ultimately showed mankind, who God is!
God loves the world; his foolish, blundering, wayward, sinsick world; and cannot bear to leave it in the troubles and disasters in which it has involved itself.
Inclosing, I want you to walk away today atleast know this.
Keep looking at him friends, and the power will come from him that will enable you to rise up into a newness of life, to live in his righteous way.
“He who does the will of God abides forever”
If men see him, and keep looking at him, the heavenly things that are all dark to them will dawn upon them, and the glory of what God really is will come to them. They will have a fuller life they could not even dream possible apart from God.
DO NOT GIVE UP
DO NOT GIVE IN TO EVIL
DO NOT LOOK AT NOTHING ELSE APART FROM GOD
All of these and many more steps are not easy to live. That’s why WE CANNOT DO IT ALONE!
We live, breathe and walk this life with a sure and certain hope that God loves us enough in every failed event we experience. Every miserable emotion we encounter and every sorrowful death we experience.
“Nothing is too wonderful for the Lord”
“His steadfast Love endures forever”
“He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction”
Let us thank God for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. Offer thanksgiving and tell of his deeds with songs of joy.
When you do your prayers and meditations, ask God this question!
“Lord, what more could you do to show me your love!”
Scripture tells us the answer is the Power and Passion of the Cross!
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!