Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Jesus Loves You, Yes It’s True


“Continue seeking God with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.”
— C. S. Lewis
Love never fails and Love is God. Love came first. More correctly put, God’s love came first. If not for God’s love there would be no creation. If not for God’s love there would be no you and no me.
God put us here for a reason, not least of which because he loves us.
Everyone who lives and breathes, and has ever lived and breathed, was willed into existence by this living God of love.
Because God Loves Us...
... We should love him. Because God loves us, and because we need God, we are to continue seeking him. When God is sought he reveals himself. The more we want this Lord of Eternal Glory in our lives, the more God makes his Spirit available to us, even in invisible ways.
If the love of God has extended itself from the realms of eternity, to conceive and engineer existence, and delve into creation—through the coming of Jesus—and to sustain the wonder of these mind-blowing creative works, that same love of God will not fail us. That same love of God that founded infinite things too wondrous for the human mind to contemplate is the love made ready and available in and through us.
Because God loves us, with a love so incredibly hard to fathom, so incomprehensible in its scope, our simple response is to love God back—by seeking him.
Because God loves us, and never insists on us returning our love for his, but gives us free will in order to choose our lives, we are free to love God with the love of God. A little rhetorical thought: is there possibly a higher privilege than to the love with the love of God?
When Responsibility Becomes Devotion
We could get all legalistic and state the obvious—that to love God is our responsibility in reciprocation for the love that God has bestowed so freely upon us.
But that sort of garbage is not what God is about. It is the devil’s work to make us feel guilty for not loving God, without giving us the revelation needed to respond to God’s love. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of our sin, such that we would respond out of thankfulness for this love that is concerned so much for our spiritual welfare.
With the knowledge that we need God, and because we have a human responsibility to love God back, our sense of duty develops into utter devotion; but only because we really sense this love has become a personal possession.
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God draws us to his heart, and our desire to know God is true only because God’s desire to know us comes first. God’s love comes first, and then our love, if we are obedient, follows.
God loves us so much that he gave the world his only Son, to perish so you and I may have life. And the Son, being obedient to willingly die for you so your sin wouldn’t count against you, has loved you with the perfection of God’s love; a love insurmountable, but inspirational to follow.
Jesus loves you, yes it’s true!
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

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