John 14:23
Jesus answered and said unto him, "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him. And we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
Seems to me that we are all born with a capacity to love. After all, we go about our live loving different people, places and things. I chose the "duck" picture simply because I do love me some ducks. Little ducks. Baby ducks. Don't care much for 'em when they grow up. Don't hate grown up ducks...their just cuter when they are babies. But I have the capacity to love outside myself.
Trouble is, if we grow up with this capacity to love, which is God-given by the way, then we find ourselves being drawn to love the things of the world. We wind up focusing on things that have no eternal value. They only temporarily fill a need or void inside of us. We buy stuff, and it makes us feel better....for a little while. We tell someone that we love them, in hopes that they will return the love so we can enter into a relationship with them. But bottom line is that we are looking to them to fill a need in our life. That's a pretty heady thing to do, if you want to know the truth. That is a lot of weight to carry around if someone who said they loved you is looking to you to make them happy and complete. That job is reserved for God.
Anyway, here we are....
Running around with the need to love and be loved....
As ol' Mickey Gilley use to sing..."Looking for love in all the wrong places."
That was me.
What's even more remarkable in all of this, is that the answer was right in front of me all this time....
God, the Father...
God, the Son...
God, the Holy Spirit....
God...the creator of love...
Actually I'm not sure I would call God the creator of love, simply because HE IS LOVE!!!
It's His nature to love...
He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us....
You may be thinking...."I didn't know I needed someone to die for me? What's up with this?"
Well, we are all born with a debt we owe.
It doesn't sound to fair to come into the world this way, but it is what it is.
We are born with a nature to do the wrong thing. We are born to be rebellious and a desire to live our life in the way we see fit. We may not say it in so many words, but we have an inborn nature that telegraphs messages to our brain and heart that we don't need God. We can do quiet well without Him.
Trouble is, when we follow this old nature we are born with...
Our choices are made based on what we want, not what God wants.
So humanity falls into different categories based on the extent of our rebelliousness.
We have those who cheat others...
We have those who lie...
We have those who become addicts...
We have those who become alcoholics..
We have those who become serial killers...
There are others who are pedophiles and rapists....
Then the weird thing is that there are others who appear to be really good people, but they too possess this sin/nature. They never run afoul of the law. They pay their taxes, and even go to church.
But each one of these categories of people all have one thing in common.
Romans 3:23
For ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
Who falls under "ALL"?
Everyone of us.
We live our lives working to feed this nature. It is a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week job that demands we obey. So what is the end result?
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is what we earn for our love that is for the things of this world.
This is the end result of loving the world, yet rejecting Christ.
We earn wages....
Sin wages....
Which leads to a death beyond our physical death.
Eternal separation from God....
A place of suffering and misery on a scale that the human mind cannot conceive of such.
A place that we choose to go to.
That's right....we choose through our actions and love for this world.
We choose because of our rejection of God's gift of eternal life.
A gift God has offered to each of us because He loves us with a love that is not of this world.
Step # 1 --- I am powerless to love as God loves. My love has drawn me into behaviors and attitudes that are totally outside the will of God. Because of this, I have sought comfort and meaning in drugs and alcohol. My life is unmanageable.
Step # 2 -- After trying to live my life in what I thought was my own control, I discovered that my life has devolved to such a degree that I can no longer decide what is best for me. I need a POWER greater than myself who could restore me to a life of making sound decisions. I have come to conclusion that such a power has a name, and that name is Jesus.
Step # 3 -- Because of me taking inventory of my life, seeing the mess and destruction I have created, I have made a decision to turn will and life over to the care of God. I will no longer follow the desires or dictates of my old nature which led me into the darkness of addiction. I will learn to follow the path Christ has laid out for me. I will rely on His Power and not my own.
I will learn to love myself, as He loves me.
I will learn to love others, as He has asked me to.
I will learn to love Him.
Why?
Simply because He is worthy to be loved..
God on you....
Mbb
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