“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.
***
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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