His Love

I Corinthians 13:13
Three things will last forever-----faith, hope and love----and the greatest of these is love.


The word love conjures up all kinds of syrupy images, doesn't it?
A young boy and girl walking down the beach at sunset, holding hands, listening to their song. Staring intently into each others eyes, carrying on a heart conversation. Or maybe it's an elderly couple sitting on a park bench. The man reaches over to take her hand and hold it. There in that touch...that brief moment of contact...a lifetime of emotion and dedication to each other is reaffirmed and made more sure. 

Love is the expression found on a mother's face as she holds her newborn. Nothing else matters at that moment. It is as if the entire world has simply stopped while these two commune in a language as old as creation itself.
Funny thing is that the world has laid hold of the word "love" and boiled it down to define a sexual act that takes place between two people.

A word that was formed and shaped in the heart of God, because that it is what God truly is....love...has been attacked and attempted to be waylaid by society in order to reshape, reform and define it as something other than how God defines it. Well.....we don't get to play that game. We don't get to take the things of God and redefine them in order to suit our own personal lusts and desires.

The love of God reaches out to those who don't want to be reached. It reaches out to those who live their lives in the shadows and back alley's of this world. This love that comes from God is an ever reaching, every calling force that seeks to draw people out of the bondage of sin, into the freedom and life that comes from accepting the work and the person of Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter how many "question marks" fill you life or your mind....the Master's love is a wrecking ball that will break through them all.

I John 4:9
In this the LOVE of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
God has seen us...
He has rightfully determined that left to our own ability and intellect (all wrapped up under the influence and power of sin) we were hopeless and incapable of saving ourselves from our sin debt that each of us owe.

God knew that the only way for us to retain relationship with Him was for our sin debt to be paid in full. A sacrifice was to be made on our behalf.
Jesus became that sacrifice. His death on the cross paid our sin debt (as well was the sin debt for every human ever born) and opened a way for us to move back into relationship with God.  Jesus came to die for me...for you...for all of humanity.

How could such a thing take place?
How could a deity that stands outside of time and space have such concern for His creation?
Simple....
God is love.
I John 4:16
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God IS Love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Here again, the love that motivates  God to reach out to us is not of this world. It is a pure, holy love that has not been tainted by sin. It is a love that is so powerful nothing in this world can stop it. Such power and love has targeted the hearts of all mankind, and yet we still run from Him. We cower in the darkness bound up by our own sin/addiction that lies to us. Does this mean that our sin/addiction is able to stop this pure, holy love God sends? No, and again I say, "No!". 

Romans 8:35
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Romans 8:37-39
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels not principalities nor power, nor things present nor thing to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today realize that God's love is all around you...
You walk in it every day.
You go about your business every day while it surrounds you.
Take a moment...still yourself and ask God to let you experience this love.
Ask Him to wrap you in it and let it soak down to your innermost being.
Then accept Him and His love.
Now that's some kind of good....

God on you...
mb